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CIVILIZATION 

DURING THE MIDDLE AGES 



CIVILIZATION 

DURING THE MIDDLE AGES 



ESPECIALLY IN 
RELATION TO MODERN CIVILIZATION 



BY 

GEORGE BURTON ADAMS 

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN YALE COLLEGE 



REVISED EDITION 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON 



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Copyright, 1894, 1914, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 




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OCT 2\ 1914 

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FROM THE PREFACE TO THE 
FIRST EDITION 

The object of this book is to show how the foundations 
of our civilization were laid in the past and how its chief 
elements were introduced, and to depict its progressive 
development until it had assumed its most characteristic 
modern features. Its purpose is to show the movement 
and direction of historic forces, and the relation of the 
facts of history one to another. In other words, it is to 
present as clear a view as possible of what is the most 
important thing for all introductory study at least, and 
for the permanent intellectual furniture of most — the 
orderly and organic growth of our civilization. If any- 
where the details have been allowed to obscure the gen- 
eral movement, there I have failed to realize my inten- 
tion. 

This being the object of the book, the notes have been 
confined as closely as possible to references to the best of 
easily accessible books where fuller accounts may be 
found, or which contain translations of the original 
sources, and to the statement of points which seemed 
important in themselves, but which did not find a natural 
place in the text. In a few cases where a single authority 
has been closely followed, a reference has been added. 
Otherwise reference has not been made to the author- 
ities used. Those who are familiar with the literature 
of the subjects treated will be able to recognize them, 
and they will be able also, I believe, to find some evi- 



Vi FROM THE PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 

dence of original knowledge and of independent judg- 
ment. 

This book is an outgrowth of the author's Primer of 
Mediceval Civilization in the "History Primer Series," 
and that book may perhaps be used with advantage as a 
more full summary than the one given in the last chapter 
of this volume. 

New Haven, December 21, 1893, 



PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION 

In the present edition numerous revisions have been 
made and some pages rewritten or added. I can hardly 
hope that I or my friends have detected all statements 
needing to be modified, but the attempt has been made 
to do so. I am indebted for suggestions in this direction 
to many^who have used the book, and particularly to 
Professors George L. Burr, of Cornell, Dana C. Munro, 
of Wisconsin, and Henry B. Wright, of Yale, Universities. 

Since bibliographical helps are now much more readily 
accessible to the student than twenty years ago, it has 
not seemed necessary to retain notes of a general biblio- 
graphical character, and they have been dropped. The 
number of special bibliographical references has been 
somewhat increased. 

New Haven, June 3, 1914. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Introduction 3 

II. What the Middle Ages Started with ... 15 

III. The Addition of Christianity 39 

IV. The German Conquest and the Fall oe Rome 64 
V. What the Germans Added 88 

VI. The Formation of the Papacy 106 

VII. The Franks and Charlemagne 135 

VIII. After Charlemagne 166 

IX. The Feudal System 189 

X. The Empire and the Papacy . . . . . . . 224 

XL The Crusades 254 

XII. The Growth of Commerce and Its Results . 274 

XIII. The Formation of France 305 

XIV. England and the Other States 332 

XV. The Renaissance 356 

XVI. The Papacy in the New Age 383 

XVII. The Reformation 406 

XVIII. Summary . . . . 433 

Index 447 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 



MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

History is commonly divided, for convenience' sake, 
into three great periods — ancient, medieval, and modern. 
Such a division is, to this extent, a natural one that each 
of these periods in a large view of it is distinguished by- 
certain peculiarities from the others. Ancient history 
began in an unknown antiquity, and is characterized by 
a very considerable progress of civilization along three 
or four separate lines. Each of these was the work of a 
distinct people, the results of whose labors were not com- 
bined into a common whole until near the close of this 
period, though the process of combination in some partic- 
ulars had been long under way. As the period approached 
its end the vitality of the ancient races appears to have 
declined and the progress of civilization ceased, except, 
perhaps, along a single line. 

Medieval history opens with the introduction of a new 
and youthful race upon the stage — a race destined to take 
up the work of the ancient world and to carry it on. 
But the men of this race were at the beginning upon a 
far lower stage of civilization than antiquity had reached. 
In order to comprehend its work and continue it, they 
must be brought up to that level. This was necessarily 
a long and slow process, accompanied with much appar- 
ent loss of civilization, much ignorance and anarchy, and 

3 



4 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

many merely temporary makeshifts in ideas and institu- 
tions. But gradually improvement began, the new so- 
ciety came to comprehend more and more clearly the 
work it had to do and the results gained by its prede- 
cessors, it began to add new achievements to the old ones, 
and the period closed when at last the new nations, in 
fairly complete possession of the work of the ancient 
world in literature, science, philosophy, and religion, 
opened with the greatest energy and vigor a new age of 
progress. This is medieval history, the first part of it — 
the "dark ages," if it is right to call them by that name 
— when ancient civilization fell a prey to savage violence 
and superstition; the last part of it, the recovery of most 
of that civilization, with some important additions, by 
the now transformed barbarians — the period which we 
call, when it has fully opened, the age of the Renaissance. 

Modern history, again, is characterized by the most 
rapid and successful advance along a great variety of 
lines, not now, so much as in the ancient world, the dis- 
tinctive work of separate peoples, but all parts of a com- 
mon world civilization which all nations alike possess. 

While, however, we can point out in this way distin- 
guishing features of these larger periods, we must care- 
fully bear in mind the elementary fact of all history, that 
there are no clearly marked boundary lines between its 
subdivisions. One age passes into another by a gradual 
transformation which is entirely unnoticed by the actors 
of the time, and which can be far more clearly pointed 
out by the historian as an accomplished fact than by 
anything in the process. 

The traditional date for the close of ancient history is 
the year 476 a. d., but recent historians differ widely in the 
specific date they choose. The great fact which marks 
the close of that age and the beginning of a new one is 
the conquest of the Western Roman Empire by the Ger- 
man tribes, a process which occupied the whole of the 



INTRODUCTION 5 

fifth century and more. But if we are to select any 
special date to mark the change, the year 476 is prob- 
ably the best for the purpose. The conquest was then 
well under way, and in that year the title of Emperor of 
Rome was given up in the West, where it had been for 
a long time a mere shadow; an embassy was sent to 
Constantinople to say that the West would be satisfied 
with the one emperor in the East, and to request him 
to commit the government of Italy to Odoaker. At the 
moment all the other provinces of the West were occu- 
pied, or just about to be occupied, by new German king- 
doms, some faintly acknowledging the supremacy of the 
empire, others not at all. 

When we turn to the close of medieval history we find 
even less general agreement as to the specific date which 
shall be selected to stand for that fact. For one author 
it is 1453, the feU °f the Eastern Roman Empire through 
the capture of Constantinople by the Turks; for another, 
1492, the discovery of America; for another, 1520, the 
full opening of the Reformation. This variety of date 
is in itself very significant. It unconsciously marks the 
extremely important fact that the middle ages come to 
an end at different dates in the different lines of advance 
—manifestly earlier in politics and economics than upon 
the intellectual side — a fact which must receive more 
detailed attention in the proper place. Each author is 
understrong temptation to select for the close of the gen- 
eral period the date of its close in that particular field in 
which he is especially interested. For the purpose of the 
present sketch the date 1520 must be chosen, because, 
although upon the political side the whole Reformation 
period is clearly in the full current of modern interna- 
tional politics, still, in other directions, it just as plainly 
marks the transition from medieval to modern times, and 
so fixes the completion for the whole round of civiliza- 
tion of the period which we are especially to study. 



6 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

This period is one, then, of something more than a 
thousand years, lying roughly between the dates 476 and 
1520. It is an exceedingly important period to study for 
the purpose of gaining a conception of the greater move- 
ments of history as a whole, because, coming as an age 
of transition between two ages of greater apparent ad- 
vance, its opening conditions cannot be understood with- 
out considerable knowledge of the results of ancient his- 
tory, and its closing age carries us so far into the current 
of modern history that we necessarily gain some idea of 
the forces which determine the new directions, and thus 
the whole course of history is, to a considerable extent, 
covered by any careful study of its middle period. In 
order to obtain such a view as this it will be a necessary 
part of our plan to look somewhat in detail at the situa- 
tion of things in the last age of ancient history, and also 
in the opening age of modern history, though somewhat 
less fully, because its character and conditions are more 
familiar to us. 

The period so denned is also a long one in the life of 
the race — somewhere near a third of its recorded history. 
It must be in itself important, and in order to understand 
it thoroughly we must first of all obtain as clear a concep- 
tion as possible of its place in the general history of the 
world. 

We have already very briefly indicated what its char- 
acter is. It is a transition age. Lying, as it does, be- 
tween two ages, in each of which there is an especially 
rapid advance of civilization, it is not itself primarily an 
age of progress. As compared with either ancient or mod- 
ern history, the additions which were made during the 
middle ages to the common stock of civilization are few 
and unimportant. Absolutely, perhaps, they are not so. 
We shall be able by the time our work is finished to make 
a considerable catalogue of things which have been gained 
during these centuries in the way of institutions, and of 



INTRODUCTION 7 

ideas, and of positive knowledge. But the most impor- 
tant of them fall within the last part of the period, and 
they are really indications that the age is drawing to a 
close, and a new and different one coming on. Progress, 
however much there may have been, is not its distinctive 
characteristic. 

There is a popular recognition of this fact in the gen- 
eral opinion that the medieval is a very barren and unin- 
teresting period of history — the "dark ages" — so con- 
fused and without evident plan that its facts are a mere 
disorganized jumble, impossible to reduce to system or to 
hold in mind. This must be emphatically true for every 
one, unless there can be found running through all its 
confusion some single line of evolution which will give it 
meaning and organization. If we can discover what was 
the larger general work which had to be done during this 
period for the civilization of the world, then we shall find 
the smaller details — the individual steps in the doing of 
that work — falling into place, becoming systematic, and 
orderly, and easy to remember. And most certainly 
there must be some such general meaning of the age. 
The orderly and regular progress of history makes it 
impossible that it should be otherwise. Whether that 
meaning can be correctly stated or not is much more 
uncertain. It is the difficulty of doing this which makes 
medieval history seem so comparatively barren a period. 

The most evident general meaning of the age is that 
which has been hinted at above. It is assimilation. The 
greatest work which had to be done was to bring the 
German barbarian, who had taken possession of the an- 
cient world and become everywhere the ruling race, up 
to such a level of attainment and understanding that he 
would be able to take up the work of civilization where 
antiquity had been forced to suspend it and go on with 
it from that point. 

Progress had ceased in the ancient world. Having 



8 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

brought civilization up to a certain point, the classical 
peoples seem to have been able to carry it no farther. 
Even in those fields where the most remarkable results 
had been attained, as, for example, in that of the Roman 
law, nothing farther seemed to be possible, except to 
work over the old results into new forms. Only in a 
single line, and that more or less in opposition to the 
general society of which it formed a part — only in the 
Christian church — was there any evidence of energy and 
hopeful life. The creative power of antiquity seems to 
have been exhausted. 

But in this statement the word seems must be made 
emphatic. We have no right whatever to assert dogmat- 
ically that it was so. The analogy between the life of a 
man and the life of a race — childhood, middle life, old 
age, death — is an attractive one, but it is necessary to 
remember that it is the merest analogy, without any sup- 
port in facts. History gives us no clear case of any na- 
tion perishing from old age. It is altogether probable 
that if the Roman world had been left to itself — had not 
been conquered and taken possession of by a foreign race 
— it would in time have recovered its productive power 
and begun a new age of advance. Some early instances 
of revived strength, as under Constantine and Theodo- 
sius, show the possibility of this. The Eastern Roman 
Empire, under far less favorable conditions than would 
have existed in the Western, did do this later to a limited 
extent. The West would certainly have accomplished 
much more. 

But the opportunity was not to be granted it. Ever 
since the days of Marius and the first Caesar the Germans 
had been waiting an opportunity to force their way to 
the west and south. Watching for any unguarded point, 
attacking from the middle of the second century with 
constantly increasing boldness and frequency, as the power 
of resistance declined, they finally found the empire too 



INTRODUCTION 9 

weak to repel them any longer, and, breaking through the 
outer shell, had everything their own way. They took 
possession of the whole Western Empire. Province after 
province passed into their hands. Everywhere they over- 
threw the existing government and set up kingdoms of 
their own, some of them short-lived and crude, others 
full of promise and of longer continuance, but everywhere 
they became the ruling race — the Roman was the subject. 
But if they were physically the stronger race, and gifted 
with some legal and political notions worthy to join with 
those of the Romans in equal partnership, they were in 
other regards rude and barbarous — children in knowledge 
and understanding — in the actual point of civilization 
which they had reached by themselves, scarcely, if in- 
deed at all, above the level of the best tribes of North 
American Indians. In capacity for civilization, in their 
ability to meet a corrupt civilization of a higher grade 
than their own and not be permanently injured by it — 
though certainly some of the best of them, the Franks, 
for instance, seem to have had quite as great a capacity 
for absorbing the bad as the good — in the rapidity with 
which they responded to the stimulus of new ideas and 
experiences they were apparently superior even to the 
Cherokee. 1 Yet in very many ways — in ideas, in dress, 
in habits and ways of living, in methods of warfare and 
diplomacy — the parallel is very close and interesting, 2 and 
if we can imagine a civilized land taken possession of by 
bands of warriors not materially above the best of our 
Indians in actual attainment, though superior to them 

1 It is, perhaps, hardly fair to the Cherokee to demand that he should 
have made as much progress in one hundred years as the Franks did in 
three hundred, and when one examines the facts impartially it is by no 
means so clear that he is not equalling the German rate of advance, and 
greatly surpassing it, as indeed he ought. 

2 For a description of some of these particulars, see the imaginary capture 
of a Roman frontier town by a German band, in Dahn's novelette, Felicitas. 
For some others, see the account of the Saxon wars of Charlemagne, in 
Emerton's Introduction to the Middle Ages, chap. XIII. 



IO MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

in spirit and in moral tone, the picture will not be far 
wrong. 

They were filled with wonder at the evidences of skill 
and art which they saw on all sides, but they did not 
understand them and they could not use them. The 
story of the German warrior who, astonished at seeing 
ducks apparently swimming on the floor of the ante- 
chamber in which he was waiting, dashed his battle-axe 
at the beautiful mosaic to see if they were living is thor- 
oughly typical of the whole age. Much they destroyed 
through ignorance and much in merely childish or sav- 
age moods. Much more was forgotten and disappeared 
because no one any longer cared for it or demanded its 
use. Art, which had long been slowly dying, at last per- 
ished. Science, no longer of interest to any one, disap- 
peared. The knowledge of the Greek language was for- 
gotten; the Latin in popular use was greatly corrupted. 
Skill of handicraft was lost. Roads and bridges fell out 
of repair. Intercommunication became difficult; com- 
merce declined. Few common ideas and interests were 
left to bind the different parts of the empire, or even of 
a province, together. The new governments were rarely 
able to enforce obedience everywhere and often hardly 
cared to try. Crimes of violence became common. Force 
reigned where law and order had been supreme, and life 
and property were far less secure than they had been. 1 

It is not strange that these things happened or that 
the ages which followed them should seem to be dark ages. 

1 A very interesting comparison could be made of the successive changes 
of condition in Gaul by reading together passages from Caesar, like I, 17, 
18, VI, n-15, and others, to show the state of the province as he found it; 
the letters of Sidonius Apollinaris, just on the eve of the conquest — trans- 
lated in Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, vol. II, pp. 321-352 — to show what 
must have been its condition in the best days of Roman occupation; and the 
story of Sicharius, in Gregory of Tours, VII, 47, and IX, 19 — condensed in 
Emerton's Introduction to the Middle Ages, pp. 85-87 — or the passage trans- 
lated from Gregory at p. 147 of this book, to show its condition under the 
Franks. 



INTRODUCTION II 

How could it possibly be otherwise? Upon a society in 
which the productive force was already declining — a de- 
caying and weakening civilization — came a mighty deluge 
of ignorance, an army of barbarians, to take control of 
everything, thinking of nothing beyond the physical life 
of the moment, knowing nothing of art or science or skill, 
and caring nothing for them. How could these things 
be preserved under such conditions as a part of the con- 
scious possession of men? The decline, which had begun 
before the Germans came, must now go on still more rap- 
idly until everything seemed to be forgotten. The whole 
Western world fell back into a more primitive stage of 
civilization, which it had once passed by, and became more 
material, ignorant, and superstitious than it had been. 
It would have required a greater miracle than is any- 
where recorded to have kept alive in the general popu- 
lation of the West the civilization of Greece and Rome 
during such times, for it would have required the recon- 
struction of human nature and the modification of all 
historical laws. 

The larger part of all that the ancient world had gained 
seemed to be lost. But it was so in appearance only. 
Almost, if not quite, every achievement of the Greeks and 
the Romans in thought, in science, in law, in the practical 
arts is now- a part of our civilization, either among the 
tools of our daily life or in the long-forgotten or perhaps 
disowned foundation-stones which have disappeared from 
sight because we have built some more complete structure 
upon them, a structure which could never have been built, 
however, had not these foundations first been laid by 
some one. All of real value which had been gained was 
to be preserved in the world's permanent civilization. 
For the moment it seemed lost, but it was only for the 
moment, and in the end the recovery was to be com- 
plete. By a long process of education, by its own natural 
growth, under the influence of the remains of the ancient 



12 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

civilization, by no means small or unimportant, which 
worked effectively from the very first, by widening expe- 
rience and outside stimulus, the barbarian society which 
resulted from the conquest was at last brought up to a 
level from which it could comprehend the classic civiliza- 
tion, at least to a point where it could see that it had very 
much still to learn from the ancients. Then, with an en- 
thusiasm which the race has rarely felt, it made itself 
master, in a generation or two, of all that it had not known 
of the classic work — of its thought and art and science — 
and, from the beginning thus secured, advanced to the 
still more marvellous achievements of modern times. 

This age of final recovery — the age of the Renaissance — 
marks thus the completion of that process of education 
— the absorption of the German in the civilization which 
he had conquered, so completely that he was able to take 
it up at the point at which the Greek and the Roman had 
been obliged to drop it and to carry it on to still higher 
results. And so the Renaissance age is the last age of 
medieval history, and medieval history is the history of 
that education and absorption, of the process by which 
the German was brought into the classical world, and by 
which out of the two — the Roman civilization and the 
German energy and vigor and productive power, and new 
ideas and institutions — a new organic unity was formed 
— modern society. This was the problem: To make out 
of the barbarized sixth century, stagnant and fragmen- 
tary, with little common life, without ideals or enthusi- 
asms, the fifteenth century in full possession again of a 
common world civilization, keen, pushing, and enthu- 
siastic. This was what the middle ages had to do, and 
this was what they did. 

It was a slow process. It occupied nearly the whole 
of a thousand years. And it was necessarily slow. Rome 
had civilized the Celts of Gaul and made thorough Ro- 
mans out of them in a hundred years; but in the case of 



INTRODUCTION 1 3 

the Germans there were at least two very good reasons 
why no such speedy work could be done. In the first 
place, they were the conquering race, not the conquered, 
a fact which made enormous difference. It was their 
governments, their laws and institutions, their ideas, their 
idioms even, which were imposed upon the Romans, not 
the Roman upon them; and, although the higher civiliza- 
tion of their subjects began its work upon them at once, 
it was only such parts of it as especially impressed them, 
not the whole round of it — with much of it, indeed, they 
never came in contact. In the second place, the Rome 
of the fifth century was no longer the Rome of the first. 
Her digestive and assimilating power was gone; indeed, in 
the interval the process had even been reversed and she 
had herself already become barbarized, and Germanized 
also, unable to resist any longer the influence of the con- 
stantly increasing number of barbarians introduced into 
the empire through her armies and her slave pens. If 
Rome in the fifth century, characterized as she then was, 
had conquered Germany, she could hardly have Roman- 
ized it in much less time than was actually required. 

But this work, however slow, began at once. From 
the moment when the German came into close contact 
with the Roman, whether as subject or as master, he rec- 
ognized the" fact that there was something in the Roman 
civilization superior to his own, and he did not consider 
it beneath him to borrow and to learn, in the majority 
of cases, no doubt, without any conscious purpose, some- 
times, certainly, of deliberate intention. 1 If we compare 

1 Through the whole course of history the Teutonic race has been char- 
acterized, above most other races, by its ability to adapt itself to a changed 
environment and to become in a short time completely in harmony with 
new conditions. It is this, more than anything else, which has given it its 
enormous influence over modern history. Whether it be the Teuton in the 
Roman Empire, or the Northman in France or Sicily, or the Dane, or Prus- 
sian, or Hollander in America, in every case, in a surprisingly short time, 
the immigrant has become as thoroughly at home in the new land as if he 



14 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

with modern times the amount of advance made in the 
five centuries following the fifth, it certainly seems very 
like "a cycle of Cathay"; but if we judge it according 
to the conditions of the time the gain was really large 
and the amount of the Roman civilization preserved was 
greater than we could have expected theoretically. We 
shall see, almost before the political system gets into any 
settled shape, decided improvement in knowledge and 
interest in science, the beginning of a steady progress 
which never ceases. 

Here, then, is the work of the middle ages. To the 
results of ancient history were to be added the ideas 
and institutions of the Germans; to the enfeebled 'Roman 
race was to be added the youthful energy and vigor of 
the German. Under the conditions which existed this 
union could not be made — a harmonious and homogene- 
ous Christendom could not be formed except through 
centuries of time, through anarchy, and ignorance, and 
superstition. In other words, the work of the middle ages 
was not primarily progress, it was to form the organically 
united and homogeneous modern world out of the heter- 
ogeneous and often hostile elements which the ancient 
world supplied, and so to furnish the essential condition 
for an advance beyond any point possible to the ancients. 
That this work was thoroughly done the twentieth cen- 
tury abundantly testifies. It will be our task to follow 
its accomplishment, step by step, from the day when the 
barbarian warrior supplanted the Greek philosopher and 
the Roman statesman until we reach the full tide of mod- 
ern progress. 

had occupied it for centuries, indistinguishable, indeed, from the native. 
The modern German of the Fatherland may be disposed to lament that lan- 
guage and special race features disappear so quickly, but the student of his- 
tory can easily see that in no other way could the race have been, as it has 
been, the great creative power of modern civilization. 



CHAPTER II 

WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH 

It follows from what has been said in the introduction 
that our twentieth-century civilization has not merely 
that complexity of character of which we are so conscious, 
but also that it is complex in origin. Its distinct elements 
are the work of generations widely separated from one 
another in time and space. It has been brought together 
into a common whole from a thousand different sources. 
This fact is very familiar as regards the work of historic 
times. We recall at once from what different ages and 
peoples the printing-press, the theory of evolution, the 
representative system, the Divine Comedy entered our 
civilization and how they enriched it. It is less easy to 
realize the presence there, in almost unchanged form, of 
the work of primitive generations who lived before the 
possibility of record. And yet, for example, we have only 
just ceased to kindle a fire and to raise wheat after meth- 
ods practically identical with those of the primitive man 
— the modification is still not essential — and the discov- 
ery of either of these two arts was, no doubt, as great a 
step in advance at the time when it was made as any 
the world has since taken. The same thing may be said, 
in a slightly modified form, of what is in some of our 
States the unit of our political system — the town-meeting. 

Of the sources from which the different parts of our 
civilization have been brought together in historic times 
there are four which greatly exceed in importance all the 
others. They are Greece, Rome, Christianity, and the 
Germans. Many separate elements have come from other 

15 



1 6 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

sources, some of them modifying very essentially our ideas 
or institutions — the alphabet from the eastern end of the 
Mediterranean Sea, philosophical notions from the Tigris 
valley, mathematical methods from Hindostan. But so 
far as we yet know, leaving one side what the further 
investigation of the monuments of early peoples may have 
to teach us, except the four mentioned, no great body of 
civilization, the entire work of no people, has been taken 
up into our civilization as one of its great constituent 
parts. Should we attempt to make a fifth co-ordinate 
with these four, we should need to group together the 
separate contributions of the various oriental nations 
made at widely separated times during the whole course 
of history and having no connection with one another. 
But the work of the Greeks as an organic whole lies at 
the foundation of all later progress. 

Of these four, three had been brought together before 
the close of ancient history. By its conquest of the clas- 
sical world Rome had added the Greek civilization to its 
own and prepared the way for the introduction of the 
ideas and influences which came from Christianity, and 
from these three sources, in the main, had been formed 
that practically uniform civilization which the Germans 
found throughout the Roman Empire when they took pos- 
session of it. To ascertain, then, what the middle ages 
had to start with, and the contribution of the ancient 
world to the twentieth century, it is necessary to ex- 
amine, though as briefly as possible, the results of Greek 
and of Roman work and the elements introduced by 
Christianity. 

The contribution of Greece comes naturally first in 
order. This was made, we may say, exclusively in the 
departments of literature and art, philosophy and science. 
Other work of hers which may have had a permanent in- 
fluence is comparatively insignificant. The work of the 
Greeks in literature and art is too well known to need 



WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH 1 7 

more than a mention. It is hardly too strong to say that 
it still remains the richest contribution to this side of our 
civilization made by any people in the course of history; 
and it is very easy to believe that, with the adoption of 
more appreciative methods of study in our schools, it 
might have an even greater influence in the future than 
it has ever had in the past, for it works always upon the 
spirit of the individual man. It was this part of Greek 
work more than any other which made the conquest of 
the Roman world, so that even those parts of Latin lit- 
erature which must be considered something more than 
mere copies of the Greek are still deeply tinged with the 
Greek influence. 

But the Greek mind was as active and as creative in 
the fields of philosophy and of science as in those of lit- 
erature and art. Greek thought lies at the foundation of 
all modern speculation, and Aristotle and Plato are still 
"the masters of those who know." All the great prob- 
lems of philosophy were directly or indirectly attacked by 
the Greeks, and their varying solutions were formed, be- 
fore the close of their active intellectual life, into finely 
wrought systems. These Greek systems of thought fur- 
nished the Romans with their philosophical beliefs and 
deeply affected the speculative theology of the Christian 
church, and ar"few brief sentences from one of them fur- 
nished the starting-point for the endless speculations and 
the barren civil wars of the Realists and Nominalists in 
the later middle ages. 

Among the Greeks philosophy and science were very 
closely related to one another. The philosopher was apt 
to be the student of natural and physical science as well, 
and it was thought that the arrangement of the universe 
and the component elements of all bodies might be de- 
termined by speculation. This was especially true of the 
early periods of Greek thinking. It is characteristic of 
all early thinking that it turns with every problem to 



1 8 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

speculation rather than to investigation, and characteris- 
tic of advancing knowledge that it is constantly enlarg- 
ing the number of those subjects which, it is clearly seen, 
are to be carried to a real solution only by experiment 
and observation. 

This last stage of knowledge was reached by the Greeks 
more or less completely in regard to a great variety of 
subjects, and the amount and character of their scientific 
work is astonishing considering its early date. Their fa- 
vorite lines of work were mathematics and the physical 
sciences, physics and astronomy, and they made greater 
advances in these than in the natural-history sciences 
like zoology and botany. This scientific work hardly af- 
fected the Romans, and it was entirely forgotten by the 
Christian nations of the West during the middle ages; 
but when modern science opened in the Renaissance age 
it began clearly and consciously on the foundations laid 
down by the Greeks. In every line the first step was to 
find out what the ancients had known and then to begin 
a new progress from the point which they had reached. 
The first medical lectures were comments on the Greek 
text, almost as much philological as scientific, and Coper- 
nicus's first step, in preparation of the scientific revolu- 
tion which he wrought, was to search the classics for a 
theory of the solar system different from the Ptolemaic. 
This is true of all the sciences — of those in which the 
Greek work has finally been thrown aside as worthless as 
of those in which it still forms a part. The science of the 
Greeks was, no doubt, in many cases entirely mistaken; 
but these mistakes represent, in all probability, stages of 
inquiry through which the mind had necessarily to pass 
in reaching the truth, and the work of the Greeks, though 
mistaken, was a positive gain. 

So brief and general a statement can give no idea of 
the marvellous character of Greek work, miraculous al- 
most considering its early date, the smallness of the land, 



WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH 1 9 

and the few generations which performed it. But a cor- 
rect appreciation of that work is now so general that it 
may suffice for the present purpose. 1 

It would hardly seem necessary, but for a popular mis- 
conception, to add to this account of the work of the 
Greeks, which permanently influenced history, the nega- 
tive statement that none of this work was political. The 
history of the Greek republics is interesting reading, and 
it seems as if the restless activity of their political life 
ought to have resulted in something of value for all time; 
but, as a matter of fact, it did not — unless it be an ex- 
ample of warning. The Greeks had a very keen interest 
in politics — they tried all sorts of political experiments, 
and they show us an immense variety of political forms. 
But all this interest was intellectual rather than practi- 
cal. It was the keenness of the competition, the excite- 
ment of the game, which had the greatest charm for 
them, and they went into the assembly to decide a polit- 
ical question in very much the same spirit in which they 
went into the theatre to see a new play. Scarcely a state 
can be found among them which makes a real success of 
any government, and in the histories of most of them, 
revolutions are- as frequent and as meaningless as any- 
where in Latin America. They were not practically a 
creative political people, and not a single political expe- 
dient of theirs was a permanent contribution to the in- 

1 This appreciation of Greek work is even coming, in some cases, to ex- 
press itself in extravagant forms. Says Renan, in the Preface of his His- 
tory of Israel, vol. I: "The framework of human culture created by Greece 
is susceptible of indefinite enlargement, but it is complete in its several parts. 
Progress will consist constantly in developing what Greece has conceived, in 
executing the designs which she has, so to speak, traced out for us," p. i. 
"I will even add that, in my opinion, the greatest miracle on record is Greece 
herself," p. x. Symonds quotes, with apparent approval, as follows: "A 
writer no less sober in his philosophy than eloquent in his language has 
lately asserted that, 'except the blind forces of nature, nothing moves in 
this world which is not Greek in its origin.'" — (Revival of Learning, p. 112.) 
The passage quoted is better evidence, certainly, of the writer's eloquence 
than of his sobriety. 



20 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

stitutional life of the race, as was the imperial govern- 
ment of the Romans or the representative system of the 
English. 1 The world did not later borrow from them or 
build on their foundations. In the science of politics, as 
in other sciences, the Greeks did extraordinary work, and 
in this way may have had some influence, untraceable for 
the most part, on the minds of statesmen of later ages. 
The Politics of Aristotle has been called as modern a book 
as Euclid, and it is a modern book for precisely the reason 
that Euclid is, because it is a thoroughly inductive study 
based upon a very wide investigation of political facts. 
His collection of constitutions for study numbered one 
hundred and fifty-eight. But the science of politics and 
the creation of workable political institutions are two dif- 
ferent things. 2 

When we turn to the work of Rome we are struck with 
the contrast which it presents to that of Greece. It 
would seem as if each people of the ancient world had 
had its special line of work to accomplish, and, doing 
this, had not been able to do anything beyond. At all 
events, Rome was strong where Greece was weak, and 
weak where Greece was strong. Her work was political 
and legal, scarcely at all artistic or intellectual. We 

1 Even federal government cannot be considered an exception to this 
statement. As a part of the world's future political machinery federal 
government is unquestionably a creation of the United States, and wherever 
else in history the federal principle may have been in use, its growth into a 
national institution, to be employed on a vastly larger scale than ever be- 
fore, is too plainly a natural development out of the peculiar conditions and 
circumstances of our colonial governments ever to be attributed to any 
foreign influence. 

2 The scholar who compares carefully the Greek constitutions with the 
Roman will undoubtedly consider the former to be finer and more finished 
specimens of political work. The imperfect and incomplete character 
which the Roman constitution presents, at almost any point of its history, 
the number of institutions it exhibits which appear to be temporary expe- 
dients merely, are necessary results of its method of growth to meet de- 
mands as they rose from time to time; they are evidences, indeed, of its 
highly practical character. 



WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH 21 

could not well afford to be without the Latin literature. 
In some departments — lyric poetry, satire, and history, for 
instance — it is of a distinctly high order. It presents us 
fine specimens of elegance and polish, and there will prob- 
ably always be those who will consider these the most 
important literary qualities, as there will always be those 
who rank Pope among the greatest of poets. But, com- 
pared with the Greek, Latin literature lacks originality, 
depth, and power. The ancients themselves were not 
without a more or less conscious feeling of this contrast, 
and while Latin literature is saturated with the influences 
of Greek thought, scarcely a single, if indeed any instance 
can be found until the very last days of Greek literature, 
in which a Greek author appears conscious of the exis- 
tence of a Latin literature. 

The same things could be said even more strongly of 
Roman art and science, but perhaps Roman philosophy 
exhibits better than anything else the contrast between 
the two peoples. There was no original Roman philos- 
ophy. The Roman simply thought over into other forms 
the results which the Greeks had reached. A good ex- 
ample of this is that sort of eclectic philosophizing so fa- 
miliar to us in the works of Cicero — a rhetorical popular- 
izing of what seemed to him the best in Greek thinking 
without any original speculation of his own, at its best 
nothing more than a sympathetic comment or paraphrase. 
This difference between the two races is seen still more 
clearly in that form of Greek philosophy which the Ro- 
mans cultivated with especial fondness, and in which they 
produced two such famous names as Seneca and Marcus 
Aurelius. It was the intensely ethical character of Sto- 
icism which attracted them, with its ideal of strong man- 
hood and its principles so naturally applicable to the cir- 
cumstances in which a cultivated Roman found himself 
under the early empire. And it was on this purely prac- 
tical side that the Roman cultivated Stoicism. He praised 



22 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

virtue in earnest phrases, he exhorted himself and other 
people to right living, he tried to make it a missionary 
philosophy and to bring its guidance and support to the 
help of men in general, he turned its abstract formulas 
into specific precepts of law, but he did not develop it 
as a science or a philosophy. The whole Roman mind 
was practical and not at all aesthetic or speculative. 

And it was on this practical side that the Roman mind 
found its mission. The great work of Rome for the world 
was political and legal. Whatever rank we give to Greece 
for its literature, we must give an equally high rank to 
Rome for the results of its genius for government. If it 
may be true, as is sometimes said, that in the course of 
history there is no literature which rivals the Greek ex- 
cept the English, it is perhaps even more true that the 
Anglo-Saxon is the only race which can be placed beside 
the Roman in creative power in law and politics. A 
somewhat detailed examination of the work which Rome 
did in this direction is demanded because the foundation 
fact of all modern civilization is the Roman Empire, or 
more accurately, perhaps, it is the external framework of 
all later history. 

The opportunity to exert such an important political 
influence came to Rome, of course, as a result of her mili- 
tary successes and her wide conquests; but these are 
themselves not the least of the evidences of her ruling 
genius. It was an opportunity which none but a great 
political people could have created or could have used to 
any good purpose when it came to them. Rome's con- 
quests were not mere military occupations. After a gen- 
eration or two the peoples which had most stubbornly 
resisted her advance had become Roman, those of them 
at least who were not already in possession of a civiliza- 
tion as high as her own. From the very beginning of her 
career, in the absorption of the little rival city states 
around her in Italy, she treated her subjects as friends 



WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH 23 

and not as conquered enemies. She allowed the utmost 
local independence and freedom of self-government pos- 
sible under her strong control of all general affairs. She did 
not interfere with local prejudices or superstitions where 
they were not harmful to the common good. She knew 
how to make her subjects understand that her interests 
were identical with theirs and that their best good was 
to be found in strengthening her power, as Hannibal dis- 
covered to his cost. She opened the line of promotion 
and success beyond the narrow limits of their own local- 
ity to ambitious spirits throughout the provinces. Bal- 
bus, a Spaniard, was consul in Rome forty years before 
the Christian era. She made no conscious attempt any- 
where to Romanize the provincials, nor any use of violent 
methods to mould them into a common race; but she 
thoroughly convinced them by reasonable evidence, by its 
constant presence and its beneficial results, of the supe- 
riority of her civilization to theirs. She won them com- 
pletely by the peace and good order which she everywhere 
kept, by the decided advantages of a common language, 
a common law, common commercial arrangements, a uni- 
form coinage, vastly^improved means of intercommuni- 
cation, and by no means least of all, by common treat- 
ment for the men of every race. The literature and the 
inscriptions give us abundant evidence of the affection- 
ate regard in which this Roman rule was held in every 
quarter. That such good government was without ex- 
ceptions is certainly not maintained, and it gradually 
changed into a bad government as time went on and as 
the task of absorbing an unceasing stream of new barba- 
rians proved too great for the exhausted empire. But 
even where Rome's rule was least favorable to the sub- 
ject, it was, until the last age, much better than the con- 
ditions which had anywhere preceded it, and the work of 
Romanization was completed before it became anywhere a 
serious evil. 



24 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

The result of such a policy was speedily apparent. It 
was a process of absorption into a common Roman race 
willingly undergone by the provincial. If there was any 
conscious effort to bring about such a result it was on the 
part of the provincial, not on that of the government, 
and he certainly made no conscious effort to prevent 
it. And this was a genuine absorption, not a mere con- 
tented and quiet living under a foreign government. The 
local dress, religion, manners, family names, language, 
and literature, political and legal institutions, and race 
pride almost or entirely disappeared, did disappear for 
all except the lowest classes, and everything became 
Roman — became really Roman, so that neither they nor 
the Romans of blood ever felt in any way the difference 
of descent, as we never do in the case of the thoroughly 
Americanized German, whose family name alone betrays 
his origin. Gaul, Spain, and Africa have all been called 
more Roman than Rome itself. Some of the provinces 
possessed schools of rhetoric, that is, training in the use 
of the Latin tongue, so famous that they were sought by 
pupils from all parts of the empire. Gaul furnished some 
of the most celebrated grammarians of the Latin lan- 
guage, and that distinguished Spanish family must not 
be forgotten which gave the two Senecas and Lucan to 
Latin literature, and the proconsul Gallio to Christian 
history, in the incident recorded in the Acts, which illus- 
trates so strikingly the attitude of the cultured Roman 
toward the earliest Christianity. In political life the case 
of Balbus has been mentioned. Before the first century 
closed another Spaniard — Nerva — had become emperor, 
and as time went on, the emperors were, more and more 
frequently, drawn from the provincials. In the days 
when the empire was falling to pieces and local com- 
manders were taking advantage of their military strength 
to make themselves independent rulers, nowhere was 
there any return to an earlier national autonomy, but 
everywhere the commander became a Roman emperor, 



WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH 25 

and reproduced, as perfectly as circumstances would 
admit, the Roman arrangements, court forms, officials, 
senate, and even coinage, and, more surprising still, in 
the very last days of the empire some of its most earnest 
and devoted defenders against their own race were Ger- 
mans or of German descent. 

It would be easy to multiply evidences of the com- 
pleteness of this Romanization, but perhaps language 
forms the best example of all, because it is one of the 
things which a race trying to maintain a separate exis- 
tence would most consciously strive to retain, as witness 
the Welsh of to-day, and because the evidence remains 
clear to our own time, in the speech of modern Europe, 
that the national languages passed out of use and Latin 
became the universal language from the mouth of the 
Douro to the mouth of the Danube. Not that this hap- 
pened for every man. In the remoter country districts 
and among the lowest classes the national language long 
remained as a local dialect. In some of the most inac- 
cessible parts the national speech permanently survived, 
as among the Basques and in Brittany. But Latin be- 
came the universal language of all the well-to-do classes. 
Nor was this change brought about because any one con- 
sciously dropped the use of his native language and 
adopted Latin in its place. It simply became a very 
great convenience for all the ordinary purposes of life for 
everybody to know the Latin in addition to his native 
tongue. He learned it with no expectation of giving up 
his own, and doubtless for a generation or two the two 
languages would go on side by side as generally spoken 
languages, and the local speech would only gradually be- 
come unfashionable and disappear. Indeed, in some 
cases, as for example in the Punic of North Africa, we 
know that a very considerable literary activity contin- 
ued in the local language after Latin had become univer- 
sally spoken. 1 

1 Schiller, Kaiserzeit, vol. I, p. 887. 



26 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

In one part of the empire there is an apparent excep- 
tion to this absorption of the native races into the Roman. 
In the eastern half of the ancient world another language 
had become universal and another civilization almost as 
prevalent as the Roman in the West. The historical rea- 
son for this is familiar. At the time when the political 
life of Greece proper was reaching its lowest decline came 
the Grecized Macedonian, and with the military supe- 
riority of the Greek soldier constructed a great oriental 
empire, and, although this empire was scarcely at all 
Greek in its political or institutional life — was, indeed, 
in many ways the exact opposite of anything which the 
genuine Greek political life could have produced — yet the 
great superiority of the Greek intellectual civilization 
and the fact that Greek was the language of the govern- 
ment and of the ruling class made the Greek language 
and Greek ideas universal. 1 These were thoroughly es- 
tablished throughout the East at the time of the Roman 
conquest, so that Rome came in contact there with a 
universal civilization as high as her own. Naturally it 
retained its place. Except politically Rome had nothing 
to offer the East, and there was not that need of a uni- 
fying and assimilating work there which Rome had per- 
formed in the West. But politically Rome had much to 
offer, and her political influence became as decided and 
as permanent in the East as in the West. Law and gov- 
ernmental institutions and forms became entirely Roman. 
Latin became the language of government and law and 
remained so until the end of the sixth century. In Greek 
compendiums and translations the legislation of Justin- 
ian remained the basis of the law of the later Eastern 
Empire. Even when so distant a portion of the Roman 

1 The New Testament is a familiar proof of this in the matter of language. 
Such passages as Acts 14 : 11 and 22 : 2 are cited as indicating, in a very 
interesting way, how the native language continued as a dialect alongside 
the universal language. 



WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH 27 

dominion as Palmyra attempted, in the third century, 
to found a new oriental state, it did it under political 
forms that were Roman, 1 and the subjects of the mod- 
ern Turkish Empire have had no reason to rejoice in what 
their rulers learned of the Romans in the matter of taxa- 
tion. The exception presented by the East to the uni- 
versal Romanization of the ancient world is more appar- 
ent than real. 

In this power of assimilation the Roman presented, as 
has already been suggested, a marked contrast to the 
Greek. To Athens had been offered, in the Confederacy 
of Delos, the same opportunity which came to Rome. 
Sparta had it again after the Peloponnesian War. The 
difficulties in the way were but little greater than those 
which confronted Rome in Italy; but neither Greek state 
was able to take any step towards a real consolidation of 
Greece, and the empires of both fell to pieces at the first 
opportunity. This difference and even the reasons for 
it were so obvious that they did not escape the notice of 
the observers of those times. The remarkable speech 
which Tacitus, in the twenty-fourth chapter of the 
Eleventh Book of the Annals, puts into the mouth of the 
Emperor Claudius illustrates so many of the points 
which have just been discussed, as well as this, that I 
venture to insert a portion of it. The question having 
arisen as to the admission of Gauls into the senate, and va- 
rious arguments being advanced against it, Claudius said : 
"My own ancestors, the most remote of whom, Clausus, 
though of Sabine origin, was adopted into the number 
of the Roman citizens, and also of the patricians, exhort 
me to follow the same plan in managing the state, and 
transfer to ourselves whatever there may be anywhere 
that is good. For I remember that we had the Julii from 
Alba, . . . and, not to mention every ancient case, from 
Etruria and Lucania and all Italy men were received into 
1 Schiller, Kaiserzeit, vol. I, p. 887. 



28 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the senate, and finally even from as far as the Alps, and 
this, too, was not done for single men alone, but lands 
and races became one with us and our state grew strong 
and flourished. . . . Are we sorry that the Balbi came 
to us from Spain, or men not less distinguished from 
Gallia Narbonensis? Their posterity are still with us, 
nor do they yield to us in love for this fatherland. Was 
anything else the ruin of the Lacedaemonians and Athe- 
nians, though they were strong in arms, than that they 
held off from them as aliens those whom they had con- 
quered? But Romulus, the founder of our city, was so 
wise that upon the same day he treated many people 
first as enemies and then as citizens. Foreigners have 
ruled over us, and to intrust the magistracies to the sons 
of freedmen is not, as many think, a recent thing, but was 
frequently done in former times." 1 

This subject deserves even fuller statement and illus- 
tration because it was by means of this thorough Roman- 
ization of the world that the work of Rome obtained its 
decided and permanent influence on all later history. 
Without this it must have perished. It was the com- 
pleteness of this assimilation which fixed the Roman ideas 
so firmly in the minds of all her subjects that the later 
flood of German barbarism, which swept over the empire, 

1 Still earlier, a Greek, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in his Roman Antiq- 
uities, book II, chaps. XVI and XVII, after describing the treatment of their 
subjects by the Romans, which had "not a little contributed to raise them 
to the empire they have acquired," says: "When I compare the customs 
of the Greeks with these, I can find no reason to extol either those of the 
Lacedaemonians, or of the Thebans, or even of the Athenians, who value 
themselves the most for their wisdom; all who, jealous of their nobility 
and communicating to none or to very few the privileges of their cities . . . 
were so far from receiving any advantage from this haughtiness that they 
became the greatest sufferers by it." — (Translation of Edward Spellman, 
London, 1758.) 

A recent writer asserts that the constitution of Athens, as described by 
Aristotle, rendered a great Athenian empire impossible because it did not 
allow sufficient rights to subjects and allies. (Preussische Jahrbiicher, Bd. 
68, pp. 1 19-120.) 



WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH 29 

was not able to obliterate them, but must even, in the 
end, yield itself to their influence. 

But this is by no means the only important result 
which followed from the unity which Rome established 
in the ancient world. Most obviously, Rome gave to all 
the West a higher civilization than it had had. She 
placed the provinces, within a generation or two, in a 
position which it would have taken them centuries of 
unaided development to reach. This is very clear, for 
instance, in the matter of government and order, to any 
reader of Caesar's Gallic War. And so it was upon every 
side of civilization. 

This empire also held back the German conquest for 
three centuries or more. That process of armed migra- 
tion which the Cimbri and Teutones foreshadowed at the 
end of the second century e. c, and which Ariovistus 
had certainly begun in Caesar's time, Rome stopped; and 
it could only be begun again by Alaric and Clovis. Dur- 
ing all the intervening time the Germans were surging 
against the Roman barriers; from the time of Marcus 
Aurelius the struggle against them was a desperate one, 
and it became finally a hopeless one. But these four 
centuries which Rome had gained were enough. During 
them the provinces were thoroughly Romanized, Chris- 
tianity spread itself throughout the empire and took on 
that compact and strong organization which was so vi- 
tally necessary in the confusion of the following time, 1 
and the Roman law received its scientific development 
and its precise statement. 

The historical importance of the mere fact that it was 
an organic unity which Rome established, and not sim- 

*"It may almost seem as if the continuance of the Roman Empire in 
the fourth and fifth centuries had only the purpose of preparing the way 
for Christianity. For as soon as this had penetrated into all the provinces 
and become strong enough to maintain its own existence against rebellion 
and heresy, the empire became a prey to the Barbarians." — (Wilhelm 
Arnold, Deutsche Geschichte, Frdnkische Zeit, I, p. 164.) 



30 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

ply a collection of fragments artificially held together by 
military force, that the civilized world was made, as it 
were, one nation, cannot be overstated. Indeed, it is 
quite impossible to state it so that its full significance 
can be seen in the words. The historic sense, the scientific 
imagination of the reader, must come to his aid. That 
this was the character of the union which Rome estab- 
lished has already been illustrated. It was a union not 
in externals merely but in every department of thought 
and action; and it was so thorough, the Gaul became so 
completely a Roman, that when the Roman government 
disappeared he had no idea of being anything else than a 
Roman. The immediate result of this was that the Ro- 
manized provincial began at once the process of Roman- 
izing his German conquerors, and succeeded everywhere 
where he had a fair chance; and it was because of this 
that, despite the fall of Rome, Roman institutions were 
perpetuated. 1 

The more remote result of it was that strong influence 
which this idea of unity, of a single world-embracing 
empire, exercised over the minds of men through all the 
early middle ages. It was this, together with the influ- 
ence of that more real union — the great united church 
whose existence had been made possible only by this 
Roman unity — which kept Europe from falling into iso- 
lated fragments in the days of feudalism. More remotely 
still, that modern federation of nations which we call 
Christendom, based upon so large a stock of common 

1 Just as in our own case, it is probable that the larger part of those who 
appear in our census reports as of foreign parentage are foreign in no proper 
sense. They are an important part of our Americanizing force. As we 
know by daily observation, the Americanized foreigner is a powerful aid to 
us in assimilating the recent foreigner, and the Scandinavians of our North- 
west, or, with most marvellous certainty, when we consider the conditions, 
the negro of the South could be trusted to perpetuate our political ideas and 
institutions, if our republic fell, as surely as the Gaul did his adopted insti- 
tutions. Witness the Republic of Liberia, notwithstanding all its limited 
success, one of the most remarkable political facts of history. 



WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH 3 1 

ideas and traditions, is the outgrowth of Roman unity. 
It would very likely have been created in time by some- 
thing else if not by this, but as history actually is, it was 
done by Rome. 

Finally, this Roman unity made possible the spread of 
Christianity. With the religious ideas which prevailed 
in the ancient world before the advent of Rome, the mo- 
ment a Christian missionary had attempted to proclaim 
his religion outside the bounds of Judea, he would have 
been arrested and executed as attempting a revolution 
in the state. It needed the toleration throughout the 
empire of each national religion alongside every other, 
and the melting of all local national governments whose 
life and prosperity had been thought to be bound up in 
the prosperity of the national religion, into a great all- 
containing government which could afford to tolerate all 
forms of religion which had been proved by the logic of 
war to be inferior to its own, it needed these results of 
the conquests of Rome before Christianity could become 
universal. As says Renan: "It is not easy to imagine 
how in the face of an Asia Minor, a Greece, an Italy, 
split up into a hundred small republics; of a Gaul, a Spain, 
an Africa, an Egypt, in possession of their old national 
institutions, the apostles could have succeeded, or even 
how their project could have been started. The unity 
of the empire was the condition precedent of all religious 
proselytism on a grand scale if it was to place itself above 
the nationalities." l 

In these ways the conquest of the world by Rome and 
the use which it had known how to make of it decisively 
influenced the whole course of history. But, in addition 
to this, some of the specific features of Rome's political 
work have had very important results. That one of 
these which has had the longest continued direct influence 

1 Report of Hibbert Lecture, in London Times of April 7, 1880, p. 11; 
Renan, English Conferences, translation of C. E. Clement, p. 21. 



32 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

is the Roman law; indeed, it is a fact of great interest 
in this connection that the direct influence of the Roman 
law is even yet extending. 

The very considerable body of law which had grown 
up in the days of the republic, somewhat narrow and 
harsh from the circumstances of its tribal origin, passed 
in the empire under conditions which favored both im- 
portant modifications of its character and very rapid and 
wide extension. No longer the law of a little state, or of 
a single fairly homogeneous people, but of a great empire 
and of numerous totally distinct races, the circumstances 
of the case, together with the native Roman genius, would 
have led, without any foreign influence, to a very decided 
softening of the ruder features of the law and its develop- 
ment in the direction of general justice. But just at this 
time came Stoicism with its ethical teaching, so deeply 
interesting to the Roman mind, and with many of its 
precepts shaped as if deliberately intended for applica- 
tion in some system of law. These are the sources of 
that very decided amelioration and ethical and scientific 
reorganization of the Roman law which, beginning soon 
after the opening of the second century, went on so long as 
it was a living system. It must be recognized as clearly 
established that in this process of humanizing the law 
Christianity had no share which can be traced until we 
reach the time of the Christian empire in the fourth cen- 
tury. Then, although the humanizing work goes on 
upon the lines already laid down, some influence of gen- 
uine Christian ideas may be traced, as well as of theo- 
logical and ecclesiastical notions. 

Growing in the two ways in which all great systems of 
law grow — by statute enactment and by the establish- 
ment of precedents and the decision of cases, containing 
both written and unwritten law — the body of this law 
had come to be by the fourth Christian century enor- 
mous and very difficult to use. Scattered in innumer- 



WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH 33 

able treatises, full of repetitions and superfluous matter, 
not without contradictions, and entirely without the help 
of printing and indexes, which do so much to aid us in 
our struggle with a similar mass of law, the necessity of 
codification forced itself upon the Roman mind as it may, 
perhaps, in time upon the Anglo-Saxon. We have, first, 
attempts at codification by private individuals — the Gre- 
gorian and Hermogenian codes, probably of the fourth 
century, and containing only imperial constitutions, that 
is, statute law. Then we have the Theodosian code, of 
the Emperor Theodosius II, published in A. D. 438, con- 
taining also only statute law, though it seems likely that 
the emperor intended to include, before the close of the 
work, the whole body of the law. This code, formed 
just at the time of the occupation of the Western Empire 
by the Germans, was of very decided influence on all the 
early middle ages. Then came the final codification in 
the formation of the Corpus Juris Civilis by the Em- 
peror Justinian between the years 528 and 534. 
This comprised: 

I. The Code proper, containing the imperial constitu- 
tions or statute law then in force, reduced to its lowest 
terms by cutting away all unnecessary matter, repetitions, 
and contradictions, and covering chiefly, though not ex- 
clusively, public and ecclesiastical law. 

II. The Digest, or Pandects, containing in the same 
reduced form the common or case law, comprised mainly 
in the res pons a of the jurisconsults, similar in character 
to the decisions of our judges, and covering chiefly pri- 
vate law, and especially the law of property. 1 

III. The Institutes, a brief statement of the principles 

1 This is what we should call in our system "unwritten law," though the 
Romans themselves reckoned the res pons a in the written law {Institutes, I, 
ii, 3), and they had under the empire in a certain limited way the force of 
statute law. Until towards the close of republican times, a classification 
which makes public law synonymous with statute, and private with com- 
mon law, is accurate enough, but it is not so for the days of the empire. 



34 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

of the law intended as a text-book for law students and 
perhaps even for more general use as an introduction to 
a knowledge of the law. 

IV. The Novellae, or Novels, imperial constitutions, 
covering various subjects, issued by Justinian himself 
after the completion of the Code. These are usually 
spoken of as if formed into a definite collection as a part 
of the Corpus Juris. This, however, was not done by 
Justinian, nor apparently ever in any authoritative way, 
and the collections of the Novels which have come down 
to us differ somewhat from one another in their contents. 

The most important effect of this codification from our 
point of view was this: By it the enormous and scat- 
tered mass of the law, which would in that form un- 
doubtedly have perished — as a historical fact the books 
from which it was made did mostly perish — was boiled 
down into clear and concise statement and into a few 
volumes which could easily be preserved. By means of 
the definite form thus given it, being put into a book 
which can be studied to-day just as it existed in the 
sixth century, there was secured a direct and immediate 
contact of the principles of the Roman law with every 
future generation. 

The specific influence of this law is not difficult to 
trace. Soon after the revival of its study in the law 
schools of Italy, in the twelfth century, the political con- 
ditions of Europe offered an unusual opportunity to the 
class of thoroughly trained lawyers which was thus formed. 
Under their influence this clear and scientific body of law 
was substituted in many of the continental states for the 
native law, which, owing to the peculiar circumstances of 
the feudal age, was even more confused and unscientific 
than customary law usually is; or, if in some cases not 
actually substituted for it, became the law for cases not 
already covered by the customary law. This substitution 
was greatly aided by the fact that in these feudal states 



WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH 35 

absolute monarchies were forming which found a natural 
ally and assistant in the spirit of the Roman law. As a 
result, this law is still a part of the living and actual 
law of many modern nations. Owing to the French and 
Spanish colonial occupation, it became the law of a part 
of the territory now within the United States and forms 
the actual law of Louisiana in the Code of 1824, which is 
English in language but Roman in law and technical 
expressions. Even the general Anglo-Saxon law, which 
retained its native character and its power of natural self- 
development, has been profoundly influenced in particu- 
lar doctrines — like that of inheritance, for example — by 
the Roman law. Still more remarkable is the fact that, 
in consequence of its permanence in the Eastern Empire, 
this law was taken up by the Mohammedan states and 
became the most important source of their law, contrib- 
uting, it is asserted, far more than the Koran to the legal 
system which now rules throughout the Mohammedan 
world. 

Apart from the direct influence of the system as a 
whole, many of the concise maxims of the Roman law, 
from their almost proverbial character, came to have an 
influence on later ideas and facts. The most familiar 
instance of this is the absolutist maxim, Quod principi 
placuit legis habet vigor em, 1 which exerted a considerable 
influence in favor of the usurpation of legislative rights 
by the monarchs at the close of the middle ages, and, to- 
gether with the marked centralizing tendency of the sys- 
tem as a whole, became one of the most effective causes 
of the formation of absolute monarchies in the continen- 
tal states. 2 

1 Institutes, I, ii, 6. 

2 An example of the influence of such maxims, of especial interest to 
Americans, is to be found in the phrase "All men are created equal," and 
like phrases, which are of so frequent occurrence in the political documents 
and the writings of the time of our Revolution. These are maxims which 
passed into the Roman law from Stoicism. They came into new and very 



36 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

In another great field the influence of the Roman law 
was equally creative — in the law and theology of the 
church. The great system of canon law which grew up 
in the government and administration of the church dur- 
ing medieval times is based almost exclusively on the 
Roman law, and in its practical interpretation in the 
church courts the principle was admitted that whatever 
was ambiguous or obscure in it was to be explained by 
reference to the Roman law. In the theology of the 
Western church the influence of the Roman law was less 
direct but hardly less important. "In following down 
the stream of Latin theology, from Augustine to the 
latest of the schoolmen, we might trace in the handling 
of such topics as sin, the atonement, penance, indul- 
gences, absolution, the silent influence of the conceptions 
which Roman jurisprudence had made current." 1 The 
same strong influence may be traced in the terminology 
and the ideas of many other sciences, and in such ethico- 
political notions as the divine right of kings, the duty of 
passive obedience, and the social contract theory of gov- 
ernment. 2 Indeed, it is not too much to say that no other 
product of the human mind, not even the Greek philos- 
ophy, has had so far-reaching, nor, in its immediate orig- 
inal form, so permanent an influence as the Roman law. 

Another specific product of the Roman political system 

frequent use, after the revival of the Roman law, in the charters of eman- 
cipation which are so numerous at the close of the middle ages as a state- 
ment of the reason which led to the granting of the charter. Brought again 
into notice in this way, their very concise statement of what seemed to be 
a great truth, and one especially attractive to theorists in states enjoying 
little actual liberty, kept them from being forgotten, and they passed into 
the writings of the speculative philosophers of the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries, and from this source into the political documents of the 
close of the eighteenth. Especially interesting is their operation as actual 
law, in at least one case, in a way which would have astonished the old Ro- 
man jurists. Inserted in the constitution of Massachusetts, they gave rise 
to a decision of her supreme court, in 1780, declaring slavery no longer legal 
in that State. 

1 Professor George P. Fisher, Discussions in History and Theology, p. 48. 

3 See Maine, Ancient Law, pp. 329 Jf. 



1 



WHAT THE MIDDLE AGES STARTED WITH 37 

has had as long a life and almost as wide an influence — 
the imperial government. Formed out of a democratic 
republic where the name of king was intensely hated, by 
the necessities which arose from the government of a vast 
empire, a real despotism but of a new type, under new 
forms and a new name, while to all external appearance 
the old republic continued as before, it is itself one of the 
best examples of the institution-making power of the 
Romans. 1 Its strong centralization delayed for genera- 
tions the fall of Rome; its real majesty and august cere- 
monial profoundly impressed the German conquerors; it 
became one of the most powerful causes which created 
the papacy and furnished it a model in almost every de- 
partment of its activity; the absolutisms of modern Eu- 
rope were largely shaped by it; and the modern forms of 
the word Caesar, Kaiser and Czar, in governments of a 
similar type, however different in detail, are a proof of 
the power and permanence of its influence in regions where 
Rome never had any direct control. We shall need to 
devote some space at a later point to the powerful preser- 
vative action of two ideas which came to be associated 
with this government — that it was divinely intended to 
embrace the whole world and to last as long as the world 
should last. 

These cases may suffice for illustration, but they are 
by no means the only specific instances of the abiding 
character of Rome's political work which could be men- 
tioned. Modern political vocabularies testify to its per- 
manence as clearly as our scientific vocabularies do to the 
influence of the Arabs, and many evidences of it will 
occur to us as our work proceeds. 

We have, then, these contributions to civilization from 
the ancient world. From Greece an unequalled litera- 

1 As the exactly opposite process, turning a monarchy into a republic 
while retaining monarchical forms, is of the institution-making power of 
the Anglo-Saxons. 



38 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

ture and art and the foundations of philosophy and sci- 
ence. From Rome a highly perfected system of law, a 
model of most effective absolutism, and the union of the 
ancient world in an organic whole — the foundation of all 
later history. 

We must remember, however, in closing this chapter, 
that we have omitted even from this general sketch one 
large side of civilization to which we can give no ade- 
quate treatment here or elsewhere. It is what may be 
called the economic and mechanical side. There passed 
over to the middle ages from the ancients large gains of 
this sort. Knowledge of the mechanical arts, acquired 
skill and inventions; methods of agriculture and naviga- 
tion; organized trade and commerce not all of which 
disappeared; accumulations of capital; cleared and im- 
proved land, houses, roads, and bridges, many of which 
continued in use across the whole of medieval times; ad- 
ministrative methods both in general and local govern- 
ment; in a word, all sorts of practical knowledge and 
training and many mechanical appliances. The eco- 
nomic influence of the Roman Empire affected in many 
ways indeed the larger movements of history. The com- 
parative free trade which the empire established, the con- 
stitution of the Roman villa or farm, the beginning of the 
process which transformed the slave into the serf, the 
forced dependence of the small landholder upon the large 
one, are important instances. These things constitute 
together, in some respects, the most primary and funda- 
mental department of civilization, and must not be for- 
gotten, though, with the exception of a few instances 
which we shall notice, they demand, like the greater part 
of political history, special and specific treatment. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ADDITION OF CHRISTIANITY 

Into this Roman Empire there came the Christian re- 
ligion, adding its own contribution of great ideas to those 
of the Greeks and Romans, and in the end acting as the 
first of the great influences transforming the ancient into 
the modern world. It appeared just after the empire 
had received its organization as a monarchy; it grew 
very slowly by count of numbers during the next suceed- 
ing generations, while the empire was still strong and per- 
fecting its organization; as the Roman power decayed it 
began to spread with greater rapidity, till, by the middle 
of the fourth century, on the eve of the German con- 
quest, it was the prevailing religion — not perhaps in ac- 
tual numbers, but certainly in influence and energy and 
in the real control of society. 

During its early career, at least, the progress of this 
new faith was rendered slow by certain facts which were 
characteristic of it. Its adherents were few. They were 
from the lowest ranks of society, workmen and slaves 
— more largely also women than men — so that it at- 
tracted very little attention from persons of position and 
influence. Its missionaries also were Jews, a turbulent 
race, not to be assimilated, and as much despised and 
hated by the pagan Roman as by the medieval Christian. 
Wherever it attracted any notice, therefore, it seems to 
have been regarded as some rebel faction of the Jews, 
gone mad upon some obscure point of the national su- 
perstition — an outcast sect of an outcast race. 

39 



40 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

Again, it is a permanent characteristic of Christianity 
that many, at least, of its external features in any partic- 
ular age — the points of conduct upon which it insists with 
the greatest emphasis — are determined, we may almost 
say are selected, by the character of the great evils which, 
for the time being, it has especially to fight. In the first 
age the greatest enemy to be overcome was paganism. 
Christianity had other truths of importance to teach, 
and other evils to overcome, but the one deadly foe 
whose complete possession of society must be first of all 
destroyed was the worship of many gods. This complete 
contrast between the new religion and the dominant 
heathenism led necessarily to a strictness in the teach- 
ing and practice of the monotheistic doctrine which the 
pagan society found it hard to understand, and which 
placed Christianity at a disadvantage in competition 
with the numerous other oriental religions which were 
at this time spreading over the Roman Empire, for Chris- 
tianity would seem to the observant Roman nothing more 
than one of this general class. 

These other religions said to the Roman: Continue to 
worship your own gods, worship as many gods as you 
please, only take this one in addition; they are good, 
but we bring you something better on some particular 
point, some more perfect statement of the common truth, 
accept this also. Christianity said : No. All these teach- 
ings are false, all idol worship is a deadly sin. You must 
abandon all these beliefs and accept this alone as the only 
true and exclusive faith. And this teaching the Christians 
carried out in their daily living even, in frequent cases 
concerning such minutiae as food to be eaten and oc- 
cupations to be pursued. This was a demand entirely 
new and incomprehensible to the ordinary heathen mind, 
trained in the idea of an unlimited pantheon, though a 
tendency towards monotheism may be found in the more 
advanced religious thought of the time. It is not strange 



THE ADDITION OF CHRISTIANITY 4 1 

that the determination of the Christian to die rather than 
to perform the simplest rite of pagan worship seemed to 
the Roman the most obstinate and insane stupidity. In 
other words, the native attitude of the ancient mind to- 
wards questions of religion needed to be completely revolu- 
tionized before the new faith could be victorious — a task 
of immense difficulty and not completely performed in 
that age, as we shall see when we come to consider the 
transformation of Christian ideas which resulted from the 
struggle. 

And yet, notwithstanding these obstacles, and the ap- 
parently slight chance of success which it had, Christian- 
ity made extremely rapid progress in relative increase. 
Starting from an insignificant province, from a despised 
race, proclaimed by a mere handful of ignorant workmen, 
demanding self-control and renunciation before unheard 
of, certain to arouse in time powerful enemies in the highly 
cultivated and critical society which it attacked, the odds 
against it were tremendous. But within a single genera- 
tion it had been successfully taught in all the central 
provinces of the Roman Empire and far beyond its 
boundaries. In the second century its progress among all 
classes was very rapid. In less than three hundred years 
from the crucifixion it had become the recognized religion 
of the imperial court and had been placed on a footing 
of legal equality with paganism throughout the empire, 
and before that century closed it was the only legal re- 
ligion. Its progress seems miraculous, and Freeman has 
not overstated the case in the following sentence: "The 
miracle of miracles, greater than dried-up seas and cloven 
rocks, greater than the dead rising again to life, was 
when the Augustus on his throne, Pontiff of the gods of 
Rome, himself a god to the subjects of Rome, bent him- 
self to become the worshipper of a crucified provincial of 
his empire." 1 It must have possessed certain great com- 
1 Freeman, Periods of European History, p. 67. 



42 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

pensating advantages to give it so speedy a victory in 
the face of such difficulties. 

By far the most important of these advantages was the 
defmiteness and confidence of its teaching on the ques- 
tions of the immortality of the soul and the expiation of 
sin. Whatever cause may be assigned for it, the fact is 
clear that the society of the empire was intensely interested 
in these two questions. At the end of the republic, the 
faith of the Romans in their national mythology may have 
grown weak, but their interest in the deeper problems of 
religion had only quickened. In the early days of the 
empire the first mentioned was the more absorbing ques- 
tion — Does the soul live after death? Can we know any- 
thing of the future life? and various forms of religion, 
chiefly from the East, like the worship of Isis, gained 
numerous adherents for a time, because they seemed to 
offer some more complete revelation upon this point. As 
the dark days came on and evils crowded upon the em- 
pire, the other question demanded more attention, and 
the practice of various expiatory rites — of oriental origin 
again and horribly bloody and revolting in character — 
became frequent in the West. Of these the most promi- 
nent was Mithraism, which at one time seemed to be a 
serious rival to Christianity. 1 But for the earnest man 
who is seeking after help in some spiritual need which 
is clearly realized, the practice of rites and ceremonies is 
never permanently satisfactory, and Christianity pos- 
sessed an enormous advantage over its rivals in the char- 
acter of its teaching upon these points, and in the con- 
fidence of its faith. The Christian teacher did not say: 
I believe. He said : I know. On the question of immor- 
tality he appealed to an actual case of resurrection, sup- 
ported, as he said, by the testimony of many witnesses 

1 See a brief description of these rites in Hodgkin, Italy and Her Invaders, 
vol. I, p. 562, note (second edition), and especially Franz Cumont, The Mys- 
teries of Mithra, translation of T. J. McCormack, 1903. 



THE ADDITION OF CHRISTIANITY 43 

— the founder of his faith, not raised from the dead by- 
some miracle-worker calling him forth by incantations, 
but rising, himself, by the power of an inner and higher 
life which was beyond the reach of death, the first-fruits 
of them that slept. On the question of the forgiveness 
of sin he appealed to the cases of innumerable individuals 
— even of communities and tribes — transformed by the 
power of his gospel from lives of sin and degradation to 
orderly and righteous living. 1 

The one thing which was the essential peculiarity of 
this teaching, as compared with other religions, was, no 
doubt, also the thing which was the source of the Chris- 
tian's extreme confidence and of his permanent faith. 
This was the belief of the Christian that an intimate per- 
sonal tie had been established between himself and God 
by the Saviour. The tender fatherhood of God, willing 
to forgive the sinful man, and to create in him anew the 
forces of a pure life, was, to the disciple, the central 
truth of the gospel. The love of God replaced the fear 
of God as a controlling principle and became a far greater 
force than that had ever been. The Christian apostle 
did not demand belief in any system of intellectual truth. 
The primitive Christianity had apparently no required 
theology. 2 He did not demand that certain rites and 
ceremonies should be performed. The rites of the primi- 
tive Christianity were of the simplest sort and not re- 
garded as causes. What he demanded was personal love 
for a personal Saviour. His was the proclamation — in the 
one way to make it a practical force in daily civilization, 
not a mere theory in the text-books of scholars — of the 
fundamental truth which all philosophy had sought, the 
unity of God and man, the harmony of the finite and 

1 Almost all the early Christian literature can now be read in English. 

2 "It is the glory of the earliest church that it had for its people no de- 
manded creed of abstract doctrine whatsoever." — (Phillips Brooks, in the 
Princeton Review, March, 1879, p. 306.) Compare Fisher, Beginnings of 
Christianity, p. 566. 



44 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the infinite. And it did become a great force, and re- 
mained so in proportion as it was not obscured by later 
misconceptions. There can be no question but that this 
personal faith in a personal Saviour, this belief in the love 
of God and the reality of heaven brought to thousands 
of the poor and ignorant, and in as high a degree, the 
comfort and confidence and fearlessness of fate, the calm- 
ness and consolations which philosophy brought to the 
highly cultured few. 1 

This peculiar personal character of its faith, was un- 
doubtedly, as was just remarked, the source of that over- 
bearing confidence of belief in its answer to the two great 
religious demands of the age which gave Christianity a 
decided advantage over every other religion. The com- 
pleteness with which it satisfied the deepest religious needs 
of the time, the fulness of consolation which it brought 
to the wretched and sorrowing, these were the most effec- 
tive causes of its rapid spread and of the permanence of 
its hold upon its followers. 

While these are the most important, some few of the 
subsidiary causes of its rapid advance deserve mention. 
The study of the Greek philosophy, and especially that 
of Plato, led some to Christianity after it began to at- 
tract the attention of the educated classes. But here, 
again, it was the greater definiteness and confidence of 
its answer to the questions which the Greek philosophy 
raised which formed the decisive reason for its accep- 
tance. The persecutions had their usual effect. They 
attracted the attention of many to the new faith who 
would otherwise have passed it by unnoticed, and they 
forced men to ask if there must not be something more 
in it than appeared on the surface to account for the 
calmness and joy of the Christian in the face of death. 

*It should be understood here and elsewhere that these matters are 
stated not as religious truths but as facts which have their part in the his- 
tory of the time and which the historian is bound not to overlook. 



THE ADDITION OF CHRISTIANITY 45 

The earnestness and enthusiasm of all early converts 
to a new form of faith were especially characteristic of 
the Christians and seemed especially contagious. The 
effect of Christianity on the lives of those who embraced 
it was constantly appealed to by the early Christians as 
evidence of the character of their religion, and it must 
have been an extremely forcible argument. It would be 
very interesting, if space allowed us to do so, to examine 
in detail the ethical influence of early Christianity so 
far as the evidence permits. There can be no question 
but that, so long as it remained a pure and simple re- 
ligion, its influence worked a moral revolution in those 
who came under it. It is only necessary to recall the 
ethical exhortations in the New Testament, or the lists 
of sins, the doers of which cannot enter the kingdom of 
heaven, and to remember such facts as the regulations 
against taking part in, or even attending, the gladia- 
torial games — the most intensely exciting amusement of 
the ancient world, or the proscribing of certain occupa- 
tions — metal workers, actors, sometimes even soldiers or 
officers of the state — to realize how complete a control 
over conduct it attempted and how squarely it attacked 
the characteristic sins of the age, and although Chris- 
tianity did not succeed in destroying sin in the world, 
nor even within its own membership, the cases seem to 
have been numerous in which the process went far enough 
to furnish a strong argument in making other converts. 

Like all great movements of the kind, the spread of 
Christianity is not to be explained by the action of a 
single cause, and others, perhaps as important as these, 
contributed to the rapidity of its advance. However the 
fact may be accounted for, the number of its adherents 
soon became great enough to attract to itself the atten- 
tion of the state. Whatever may be true of the first 
century, whether or not the Roman government was con- 
scious in that age of any distinction between Christians 



46 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

and Jews, or whether it had any clear idea of what it 
was doing in the persecutions under such tyrants as Nero 
and Domitian, it is certain that, early in the second 
century, it came to have an understanding of Christian- 
ity and its attitude towards the state religion — an atti- 
tude which the conscientious Roman ruler could hardly 
pass unnoticed. 

The action of the Roman government in respect to 
many of the new religions which were making their way 
towards the West was inconsistent. It was an alterna- 
tion of careless indifference, or even apparent favor, with 
spasmodic attempts at repression which really accom- 
plished nothing. But there was in Christianity an ele- 
ment of hostility towards the state which none of the 
other new religions contained. While they might lead 
to a neglect of the state religion by the greater interest 
excited in the new faith, Christianity insisted upon the 
entire abandonment of the national worship, not as an 
inferior religion but as an actual and particularly hei- 
nous sin. According to all the ideas of the Romans, such 
a demand could be nothing but rebellion and treason. 
The safety of the state depended upon the fidelity of the 
citizens to the national worship. If the gods were duly 
honored and the sacrifices carefully performed, the state 
flourished; if they were neglected or carelessly wor- 
shipped, misfortunes followed. Undoubtedly this belief 
on its practical, if not on its theoretical side had greatly 
weakened during the prosperous times of Rome's his- 
tory. But it had not been abandoned, and when public 
misfortunes became frequent and the power of the state 
seemed declining, it was natural that the earnest re- 
former should believe the neglect of the gods to be the 
source of the evil and seek a restoration of prosperity by 
means of a restoration of the national religion; or, if not 
himself fully confident of this, it was natural that he 
should believe that the " reflex influence " of an earnest 
national worship would check the causes of decline. 



THE ADDITION OF CHRISTIANITY 47 

It follows from this that the time of systematic and 
deliberate persecution comes when the real statesmen of 
the empire have become conscious of the deadly nature 
of her disease. It seems evident that we must say that, 
during the first century, the government had no distinct 
consciousness of the existence of Christianity. The sec- 
ond century is a time of local and temporary enforce- 
ment of the laws against the Christians. With the third 
century we reach an age of fearfully rapid decline and 
of most earnest attempts, at intervals, by clear-sighted 
emperors, to turn back the tide, and this is the age of 
planned and thoroughgoing imperial persecution. There 
was really no alternative for men like Decius and Valerian 
and Diocletian. Christianity was a vast, organized de- 
fiance of the law. It vehemently denounced the national 
religion as a deadly sin. It earnestly denied any para- 
mount duty of loyalty to the state, and appealed to a 
higher loyalty to another fatherland. No restoration of 
earlier Roman conditions, such as the reformers hoped 
for, could be possible unless it was overcome. 1 

But it was too late. Christianity was now too strong. 
These systematic persecutions of the third century failed, 
and the last, Diocletian's, ended in a virtual confession 
of defeat. Not that the Christians were now in the 



1 The whole subject of the teaching of early Christianity upon the rela- 
tion of the individual to the state, and its effect in the Roman Empire, is 
a very interesting one. It has been repeatedly asserted that the extreme 
vividness with which it conceived of the higher interest of the life to come 
in comparison with this life, and of citizenship in the kingdom of Christ 
as wider and more obligatory than any earthly citizenship, was one of the 
serious causes of the dissolution of the Roman state. The proof of this 
assertion seems to me entirely inadequate. The most that can be main- 
tained with certainty is that the attitude of the Christians was a very 
serious obstacle to the efforts at restoration and revival in the middle empire, 
so serious an obstacle, indeed, that it goes far, when looked at from the 
point of view of the Roman statesman, to justify the attempts of the reform- 
ing emperors to put down Christianity by force even, since there was no 
possible means of bringing its adherents back to their duty to the state. 
That the teaching of Christianity was a positive cause of dissolution I do 
not think can be shown. 



48 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

majority. They were far from it, and did not become 
so until long afterwards. No exact figures are possible, 
but it seems certain that at the beginning of the fourth 
century they were not more than one-tenth of the total 
population in the eastern half of the empire, nor more 
than one-fifteenth in the western. But they had an im- 
portance altogether disproportionate to their numbers. 
A gloomy and hopeless fear of the future was settling 
over the pagan world. It seemed to be coming to real- 
ize that its best days were past and that its highest 
creations were falling into decay, and to be losing its 
earlier self-confident spirit and energy. But the Chris- 
tians had been inspired with a new hope for the future 
which was wholly independent of the fate of the empire. 
The convulsions and revolutions of the present could only 
be prefatory to a better era, and the Christian commu- 
nity was full of enthusiasm and energy and the vigor of 
a new life, in marked contrast to the pagan. Again, the 
Christian was a distinctly city population; that is, their 
numbers, however small they may have been as com- 
pared with the whole, were massed in the especial points 
of influence, occupied the strategic positions throughout 
the empire. Still further, their organization, though less 
close than it was soon to be, gave them means of speedy 
communication and common action. Undoubtedly, their 
power was greater than their relative numbers and 
probably greater than they themselves knew. But it 
was not long before the man came who suspected the 
fact, and, in turning it to his personal advantage, secured 
the triumph of Christianity over paganism. 

That Constantine declared himself a supporter of 
Christianity from a conviction of its truth or from relig- 
ious motives cannot be maintained. Indeed, there is no 
evidence to show that he ever became in heart a real 
Christian. His motive is not hard to guess. As he 
started out from his small frontier province with his 



THE ADDITION OF CHRISTIANITY 49 

little army to conquer the empire, the odds against him 
were tremendous. But there have not been many men 
in history of clearer political insight than his. It is not 
rash to suppose that he reasoned with himself that if he 
proclaimed himself the protector of this hitherto illegal 
and persecuted sect they would rally to his support with all 
their enthusiasm, and that he would secure the aid of the 
most vigorous faction in the state. The great weakness 
of heathenism, in contrast with Christianity, must have 
been apparent to so keen an observer. Without union 
among its scattered forces, without leadership, believing 
in itself with no devoted confidence, without faith in the 
future, with no mission in the present to awaken energy 
and life, it was not the party which an ambitious and 
clear-headed young man would choose to lead to victory. 
The motive which induced him to support Christianity 
was purely political, and the result certainly proved his 
judgment correct. 

But in another sense the act of Constantine has a 
further significance and is a part of a wider movement. 

The transformation of the Roman Empire from the 
ancient to the medieval was made in the half century 
which followed the accession of Diocletian. The changes 
introduced by him in forms and constitution, as modi- 
fied and carried farther by Constantine, marked an entire 
revolution, a complete change of front. The empire cut 
itself loose from its past. It no longer pretended to be 
what it had been at first. It frankly recognized the situ- 
ation as it was and no longer attempted to restore the 
old. It had faced the future. This change logically car- 
ried with it the recognition of Christianity. It is by no 
means certain that Diocletian was not vaguely conscious 
of this. Constantine realized it clearly enough for action, 
though he might not have been able to put it in this form 
of statement. 

For Christianity, as for the empire, this was an age of 



50 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

transition, an age of transformation in character and in 
constitution, the results of which will occupy us elsewhere. 

It remains for us to point out, so far as it is possible, 
the contributions of Christianity to our civilization, as 
one of the four great sources from which that civilization 
was originally derived. What are the new elements which 
were brought into human life and progress by the Chris- 
tian religion? 

In making an attempt to do this it is necessary at the 
outset to notice briefly, by way of caution, two or three 
elementary facts which will be stated more fully in a 
later chapter. In the first place, we are to examine the 
effect of Christianity as an historical force, not as a di- 
vine religion. Whether its claim to an especial divine 
character be true or false makes no difference in this in- 
quiry. Here we are to seek the influences which certainly 
follow from it as historical facts, whichever hypothesis 
may be adopted. 

In the second place, we are concerned here neither 
with the results which were accomplished by the Chris- 
tian theology, nor with those which followed from the 
church as a government or an ecclesiastical institution. 
In both these directions the Christian religion furnished 
the foundation for great historical constructions which 
had extremely important results. But in neither case is 
Christianity as a religion the really creative power, and 
the results which followed from the dogmatic system, or 
from the church, can be credited to the religion only in 
so far as it furnished an occasion for the action of the 
forces which really called them into existence. It is with 
the religious that we are concerned at this point, and not 
with the theological or the ecclesiastical, though these 
affect our history elsewhere. 

Again, it should be noticed that influences of a relig- 
ious nature, like those of pure ideas of any sort, are diffi- 



THE ADDITION OF CHRISTIANITY 5 1 

cult to trace with absolute exactness. Their action is 
much less likely to be made a matter of record than is 
that of other causes which may have contributed to the 
common result. There can be no question, for example, 
but that the teachings of the gospel were decisive in- 
fluences, in thousands of individual cases in the United 
States, in creating a public opinion against slavery be- 
fore the Civil War; but it would be far more difficult to 
write the history of their action than to write the history 
of the political influences which combined with them. We 
are often confined to inference in such cases in the ab- 
sence of positive proof, but the inference may be so ob- 
vious as to be equivalent to proof. 

Taking up, then, the work of Christianity for civiliza- 
tion, we must first consider its influence upon the world's 
religious ideas in the strict sense of the word, and it 
will be in this direction that its most important influ- 
ence will be found. Religion forms one great side of civ- 
ilization, and whatever raises the world's religious con- 
ceptions to a higher level must be, it need hardly be said, 
among the great civilizing forces of history. 1 

As a contribution to the religious side of civilization 
the general work of Christianity is not difficult to state. 
The work of this new religion, which stands first in logical 
order, was to free the monotheistic idea which the Jews 
had attained from the narrow tribal conditions which had 
made the general acceptance of it impossible and to make 
it the ruling idea of God in the Christian world, from 
which it passed later to the Mohammedan. God was to 
be henceforth one God. 

It introduced with this idea of the one only true God 
a wholly different conception of his character and of his 

1 In considering in the first part of this chapter those ideas of the early 
Christianity which aided in its rapid extension throughout the ancient 
world, some of its teachings and results which were new have already been 
indicated. They will be repeated in this connection for completeness' sake. 



52 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

relation to man from any that had prevailed before, em- 
phasizing the fatherhood of God and his love for man. 
This idea of the fatherhood of God, typified and pro- 
claimed in an extremely effective form in the sonship of 
Christ, man's elder brother, brought man near to God 
and gave him a new point of view for all the future. 
Love became the great religious force of the new age. 
In the practical working of Christianity this idea did not 
remain a mere idea. It was transformed into a positive 
force in history through the keen conception which the 
individual Christian had of the immediate personal re- 
lationship between himself and God, by virtue of which 
the power of the Almighty would come to his aid in his 
endeavor to make himself like God. In other words, 
Christianity not merely taught that this relationship was 
an ideal possibility, but it made men believe it as a fact, 
so that they actually lived with a sense of the divine 
power in them. 

This was in reality, to repeat what was said in another 
connection, the proclamation of the unity of God and 
man, of the finite and the infinite, not as a philosophical 
idea merely, or speculative theory, but as something ac- 
tually to be realized by common men. The "way of 
return" in which the world of the time was so deeply in- 
terested was opened to all. A sense of reconciliation and 
harmony with God might become, Christianity said, a 
conscious fact of daily life for every individual. The 
convert was required to bring himself into a psycholog- 
ical condition of submission to the will of God of which 
the inevitable result was a sense of actual reconciliation. 

Christianity also taught, as a necessary result of the 
Christian conception of the relation between God and 
man, that religion has a direct practical mission as an 
ethical teacher and help. This was a new and most im- 
portant step in advance. The ancient national religions 
had made no ethical demand of the worshipper. The 



THE ADDITION OF CHRISTIANITY $$ 

character attributed to the gods could not be helpful to 
any man. The pagan priest had never looked upon him- 
self as a teacher of morals, or conceived of any reforma- 
tory mission for his religion. The Greek or Roman in 
need of ethical aid and comfort sought the philosopher 
and not the priest. This whole condition of things Chris- 
tianity revolutionized. The pure ideal of character which 
it held aloft in its conception of God, its clear assertion 
of the necessity and the possibility of such a character 
for every man which it made in the gospel narrative, 
created an intimate bond between religion and ethics un- 
known before. 1 The religious life which Christianity 
aimed to create in the individual must of necessity express 
itself in right conduct. This was its true fruit, its ex- 
ternal test, and to perfect this the energy of the new 
religion was especially directed. 

It is no doubt true that these religious conceptions did 
not immediately and completely gain the victory over 
the older and cruder. The struggle between the old and 
the new was often obstinate and long continued, and the 
higher conception long obscured by persistence of the 

1 The Old Testament in this, as in some other of the points mentioned, 
foreshadows the clearer teaching of the New. St. Augustine perceived 
this difference between Christianity and the Roman religion, and in the 
City of God challenged the pagans to produce instances of moral teaching 
in their religion. See especially bk. II, chap. 6. The fact that the Greek 
and Roman religions, which are the pagan religions of the ancient world in 
the direct line of our civilization, remained to the end strongly political or 
aesthetic in character, probably prevented them from reaching the idea of 
a connection between the national religion and private morals, and left the 
recognition of this truth to the poets and philosophers, who certainly came 
near to it. See, for example, Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I, i, 3 and 4. 
The case of Socrates is very much to the point. He saw as clearly, prob- 
ably, as ever any pagan, the connection between man's character and God, 
and, in what is a very remarkable way, also, with that conscious submission 
of the will to God which is a necessary condition of spiritual knowledge. 
But Socrates was put to death because his teaching was thought to be 
dangerous to the state. In some of the other pagan religions, like the Egyp- 
tian, this connection was more clearly seen, and, though not contributing 
directly to our civilization, such cases are, in themselves, instructive. 



54 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

lower. But in so far as these ideas are now the posses- 
sion of men, it must be reckoned to the credit of Chris- 
tianity, and whoever, even if he deny to Chri§t,iai3Lity a, 
peculiarly divine character or any finality as a religion, 
may yet hope that a still more perfect understanding and 
realization of religious truth will be gained in the future, 
must recognize in Christianity the foundations on which 
it will be built. 

So much, at least, may be said with confidence upon 
the contribution which Christianity made to the strictly 
religious side of our civilization. If what has just been 
asserted of the connection which the Christian teaching 
established between religion and ethics be true, it follows 
that a further influence of this religion is to be traced in 
the direction of practical ethics. 

Here is to be noticed, first of all, the lofty ideal of a 
pure and sinless life which Christianity held before all 
men in its story of the life of Christ, as a model which 
they were to follow, as the divinely given pattern accord- 
ing to which they were to shape their own lives. For 
Christianity did not conceive of Christ's life as the life 
of a God impossible for man, but as a divinely aided 
human life, as the life of a divine being who had been 
willing to become really a man and to put himself into 
those conditions and limitations in the midst of which 
man must live in order that he might be taught to realize 
the possibilities of his own life. Or, as it has been finely 
said, this life of Christ " revealed to man both the human 
side of God and the divine side of man." The Christian 
ideal was not like the Stoic, a mere ideal which had never 
been attained. In this respect Christianity made a most 
decided advance upon Stoicism in the fact that it pointed 
to an actual life which had realized its ideal, as well as 
in its further teaching that man had not to depend solely 
upon the power of his own will in his endeavor to attain it. 

In the second place, Christianity taught, most espe- 



THE ADDITION OF CHRISTIANITY 55 

daily, that the duty of conformity to this ideal and of 
fidelity to the higher moral law was the supreme law of 
conduct, whatever the power might be which demanded 
anything to the contrary. Christianity clearly asserted 
that the supreme moral law was distinct from the law of 
the state and of a higher validity. It was not exactly a 
new idea that there existed a moral law separate from 
the law of the state to which man ought to conform. 
Stoicism at least perceived the fact. But that this law 
demanded a rightful obedience of the individual when 
the positive requirement of the state conflicted with it 
was an advance, though certainly the pagan ethics could 
not have been far from this truth. But Christianity did 
not stop with this. It furnished a direct practical ex- 
hibition of the principle in a constant succession of the 
most public and most dramatic examples in every period 
of persecution. Within its own membership, also, it pro- 
ceeded to the positive enforcement of this supreme moral 
law in the system of church penances, very early devel- 
oped at least in some directions. The church began to 
hold its membership directly responsible for acts of which 
the state took no account. Whatever may be said of 
the system of penances of any later date, there can be 
no question but that it was in primitive times a most 
effective moral teacher. 

In the third place, Christianity taught that the con- 
scious relationship established between the individual and 
God in this life would determine his destiny in the life to 
come, and that, consequently, a right moral character, 
as the necessary product of that relationship, as the in- 
dispensable fruit and test of the harmony of the human 
will with the divine will, was of infinite importance. 
Wrong living and immoral life would destroy that har- 
mony between God and man upon which an eternity of 
happiness depended. I doubt if the early Christianity 
anywhere formulated this teaching in exactly this shape, 



56 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

but if the statement was more concrete in form the ethical 
meaning and influence were precisely as stated. 1 

It followed necessarily from this belief that many 
actions of which the ancient law had taken no account, 
and which the ancient society had regarded as unimpor- 
tant, or even as indifferent, morally, might have a tremen- 
dous significance as elements of permanent character, 
determining the attitude of the individual towards God. 
It is, without doubt, chiefly through the influence of this 
teaching, through the introduction of the idea of sin as 
a controlling idea in ethics, that the work of Christianity 
has been done in raising the general moral standard and 
in clarifying specific ethical judgments, as in the change, 
to specify one of the most striking cases, which has been 
brought about in the character of the judgment passed 
upon sexual wrong-doing. 

Another conclusion from this teaching in regard to 
character was that the determining factor in all ethical 
judgment of the individual must be the inner character 
and not the external act; that the external act is of im- 
portance only as a sign of what the inner character is. 
This also was not exactly a new idea, but Christianity 
put it in a far more vivid and striking form than ever 
before when it recorded, in the book which was read and 
reread as the special religious guide and manual of all 
believers, the impressive words of its founder in which 
he proclaimed, in regard to some of the most easily be- 
setting sins of every age, that the passion cherished in 
the heart carries with it the guilt of the act itself. 

1 But see St. Augustine, City of God, XXI, 25 (Dods's translation, vol. II, 
p. 459): "And therefore neither ought such persons as lead an abandoned 
and damnable life to be confident of salvation, though they persevere to the 
end in the communion of the church Catholic, and comfort themselves with 
the words, 'He that endureth to the end shall be saved.' By the iniquity 
of their life they abandon that very righteousness of life which Christ is to 
them, whether it be ... by doing any one of those things of which [the 
apostle] says, 'They who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of 
God.'" (Gal. 5 : 21). Compare, also, the opening sentences of XIX, 4. 



THE ADDITION OF CHRISTIANITY 57 

In the fourth place, among the contributions of Chris- 
tianity to ethics — and in some respects this was its most 
decisive ethical influence — Christianity taught a doctrine 
of hope to the morally depraved and debased in char- 
acter. It taught that if the inner character was not 
right, it might be transformed by the grace of God, if 
the individual would accept for himself the culminating 
truth of its religious teaching, forgiveness of sin through 
faith in the work of Christ, that it might be transformed 
all at once, by a single supreme choice, a conscious sub- 
mission of the will to God, so that the man would come 
to love what he had hated and hate what he had loved. 
And it also taught that the power which had so trans- 
formed the life would continue a constant divine aid in 
the moral endeavors and struggles of the new life. The 
essential thing to be regarded here, entirely independent 
of any religious significance which it may have, is the 
historical fact that Christianity did create in the minds 
of men a firm and confiding belief in such a transforma- 
tion. 1 

It begot in the debased and despairing outcast a firm 
assurance that he had escaped wholly from his past life; 
that its associations and temptations would no longer 
have any power over him, but that he was as free to begin 
a new life as if he had been born again. In this belief 
which it created, Christianity was introducing an entirely 
new factor into history. The greatest problem of prac- 

1 Origen quotes Celsus as saying: "x\nd yet, indeed, it is manifest to every 
one that no one by chastisement, much less by merciful treatment, could 
effect a complete change in those who are sinners both by nature and cus- 
tom, for to change nature is an exceedingly difficult thing." After calling 
attention to the fact that philosophy had sometimes worked such a change 
of character, Origen says: "But when we consider that those discourses, 
which Celsus terms 'vulgar,' are filled with power, as if they were spells, 
and see that they at once convert multitudes from a life of licentiousness to 
one of extreme regularity, and from a life of wickedness to a better, . . . 
why should we not justly admire the power which they contain." — (Trans- 
lation of Origen, in Ante-Nicene Library, vol. II, pp. 145-147. 



58 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

tical ethics has always been, not to get men to recognize 
the truth intellectually, but to get them to be true in 
conduct to their ethical convictions. It is a fact, no doubt, 
that Stoicism taught a very high system of moral truth; 
it even attempted, as a sort of missionary philosophy, to 
persuade men to live according to the laws of right; but 
it recognized its powerlessness to make Stoics of the 
masses. In the work which it did in this direction is to 
be found one of the greatest contributions of Christianity 
to the ethical regeneration of the world. In the directly 
personal character of its central truth, Christ the Sav- 
iour of each individual man, in the firm confidence which 
it created that the power of God had transformed the life 
and would constantly aid in the struggle to keep it right, 
and in the creative power of love, rising in the heart of 
man to meet the love of God, Christianity set a new eth- 
ically regenerating force at work in the world. And it is 
through the emphasizing of these ideas that the trans- 
forming power of Christianity has been exercised. In 
proportion as Christianity has kept these truths at the 
front in its teaching and realized them in its prevailing 
life, it has been a great force in leading men to a higher 
ethical level. As it has put something else in their place 
as the main thing to be emphasized, whether external 
forms or doctrinal beliefs, it has failed of its mission and 
limited its own power, and this has been undoubtedly the 
case through long periods of time. It has been said that 
the church never sullied the purity of its moral teaching; 
but it must be confessed that there are ages of Christian 
history when the theoretical teaching seems to be almost 
the only thing that did remain pure, and when this had 
but little real influence upon the general life of the time. 
Genuine Christianity, in such an age, was certainly al- 
most lost to sight, living on in those unpretending lives 
which attracted no attention at the time, but of which 
we find the traces even in the darkest days. One of 



THE ADDITION OF CHRISTIANITY 59 

the most hopeful signs of our own time is the recovery 
of influence and emphasis in the active Christianity of 
to-day which these ethical ideas have made. 

It is hardly possible to overstate the importance of the 
new power thus brought into the moral life of the world. 
Science forbids us to believe it possible to add any new 
force of importance to the sum total of physical forces 
already at work in the universe. But it would seem as 
if we certainly came upon the fact here that with Chris- 
tianity there was added to the sum total of energies in 
action in human history a new increment of ethical force. 
Something which had not existed in the world before 
actually made it easier for men to escape from the bond- 
age of evil habits and to realize their ideals of a moral 
life. It may be difficult to follow through their details 
the results which have been thus secured, because they 
are realized in character and in individuals in spheres of 
life where record is unusual, and by forces that are silent 
and unobserved in action. But publicans and sinners 
transformed into saints of Christian history are by no 
means confined to the gospel days. 1 

There remain to be considered certain results which 
Christianity has accomplished, either by itself or in com- 
bination with influences from other sources, which do not 

1 Very little has been said in the above passage of the influence of Chris- 
tianity upon specific ethical doctrines, and for these reasons: Upon cer- 
tain points, the brotherhood of man, for example, it does not seem to me 
that the things ordinarily said are true. Upon some others I am very 
much in doubt what ought to b*e said, as upon the duty of self-sacrifice for 
others, an idea of conduct which appears to be undergoing transformation 
at the present time. But in the main, for this reason: It was no part of the 
peculiar mission of Christianity to make known specific ethical principles. It 
needs no revelation to make them known to men. The laws of conduct 
are as much a part of the constituent laws of man's being as are the laws 
of logic, and the growing experience of man teaches him what these laws 
are in the one case as it does in the other, and enlarges and clarifies and en- 
nobles his ethical ideas precisely as it does his mathematical. The pecu- 
liar mission of Christianity is in the religious sphere, and its relation to 
ethics is, as indicated above, in the vital necessity which it places upon the 



60 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

naturally fall under either its religious or its directly 
ethical work. 

Another chapter will treat, under the elements of civi- 
lization which the Germans introduced, of the origin of 
the modern idea of the worth of the individual man as 
compared with the classic idea of the greater importance 
of the state. One source out of which the modern idea 
has grown is, without doubt, the supreme value placed 
upon the individual man in the Christian teaching of the 
vastly greater importance of the life to come than of this 
life or any of its interests, of the infinite destinies before 
each man, all depending upon his individual choice and 
character. The attitude of the early church in this mat- 
ter, towards the state under which it existed, the Roman 
Empire, was probably more extreme than its attitude to- 
wards any later government, and yet there have been 
some ages in which the contrast between the higher in- 
terests of the individual and those of the state has been 
drawn almost as sharply, and the teaching of Christian- 
ity on the point has certainly been clear and unmistak- 
able. That this teaching led to the adoption of positive 
institutions in any free government cannot be affirmed. 
Its influence is to be found rather in the line of the ideas 
by which we defend our right to individual liberty. 

Christianity taught also the equality of all men in the 
sight of God. It taught this not merely as an abstract 
idea. Stoicism had done that. But in the early Chris- 
tianity, at least, it put the idea into practice so far as it 
was possible to do so. The master was held to treat his 
slave as a brother. They both stood on the same foot- 
individual, of living better, as the life which is in the vine makes it, of neces- 
sity, bear fruit. 

I quote the following passage from a distinguished living divine as an 
example of the careless writing which is often done on the specific ethical 
influence of Christianity: "It is not without significance that the first hos- 
pitals, the first schools, the first free states have been Christian. Monas- 
teries were the first hospitals; monks were the first teachers." 



THE ADDITION OF CHRISTIANITY 6 1 

ing within the church, and its offices and dignities were 
open to both alike. If the early story that, in the third 
century, a slave became bishop of Rome is doubtful, the 
fact that such a story came to be believed at all is signifi- 
cant; and certainly in feudal days, when the church fell 
largely under the feudal influence, instances are not un- 
common of men from the lowest classes rising to positions 
in the church of the highest rank. The teaching of the 
church always kept before men the idea of the equality 
in moral rights and in final destiny of all men. That it 
was the chiefly effective force in establishing practical 
equality, so far as it has been established, can hardly be 
asserted. 1 

Again, Christianity demanded the complete separation 
of church and state and asserted that each must be rec- 
ognized as having its own distinct and independent mis- 
sion to perform. In the ancient world the two had been 

1 Under this point something may be said upon the discussions, which 
have been frequent in the past, on the specific influence of Christianity in 
the abolition of slavery and in the advancement of woman to a position 
of equality with man. It is clear to the careful student of history that both 
these reforms have been brought about by a combination of economic, social, 
and moral causes, of which the Christian teaching forms only a single ele- 
ment. The attempt on the part of some to claim for Christianity more of 
a share in these results than can be fairly claimed grows apparently out of a 
misapprehension of the nature and field of Christian influence. Ethical 
exhortation, and denunciation of vice, and the example of noble lives are 
most powerful forces in the moral advancement of the race, and it is ab- 
surd to deny them, as some seem desirous to do, their proper share in the 
result. But where, as often happens, an institution which involves a moral 
evil is bound up with the economic and social conditions of a given stage 
of civilization, it requires more than a moral conviction, more even than 
a general moral conviction that it is wrong, to secure its overthrow, however 
important such a moral conviction may be as one of the necessary causes 
of its destruction. In such a case, also, the process of creating a general 
moral condemnation of the evil is always a long and slow one, and not 
infrequently the professed teachers of morals are to be found upon the 
wrong side. So long as economic and social conditions, real or supposed, 
favor the continuance of an institution or a practice, plausible moral argu- 
ments in its support are not difficult to find; when influences from various 
sources begin to combine against the evil, then the true principles of ethics 
come to their aid and hasten the common result. 



62 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

intimately associated, and the religious organization had 
been looked upon as very largely a branch of the political. 
This view of the relationship contained a great danger 
for the growing church — the danger of being absorbed in 
the state, of losing all independence of development, and 
of being diverted from its own proper work to serve polit- 
ical ends. It was undoubtedly this danger which forced 
the early church to develop so clearly the doctrine of 
independence of state control which is involved in Chris- 
tianity and to insist upon it so strongly against Roman 
emperors and German kings. 

That the modern complete separation of church and 
state, as we have it in the United States, has grown out 
of a protest again the position of the church itself on 
this question, is not a proof that the separation of church 
and state is not an outgrowth of Christian teaching, but 
furnishes us only a further instance of the fact that the 
later church, as a whole, did not remain true to the fun- 
damental principles of Christianity, and that these had 
to be recovered by a reformation of some kind. When 
the church had secured its independence of the state, 
and perfected its organization, and grown strong, it went 
a step further and asserted the right of the church to 
control the state. That this principle in practical opera- 
tion is as dangerous as the other, which absorbs the 
church in the state, it needs no argument to prove; but 
it also needs none to prove that both are equally foreign 
to the teachings of Christianity. 

The gain to civilization from the complete separation 
of church and state is easily seen. It is an essential 
condition of free thought and free discussion that the 
totally distinct spheres of the two institutions should be 
recognized, and without it intellectual progress, except 
in the realm of theory and barren speculation, would be, 
if not impossible, beset with almost insurmountable 
difficulties. 



THE ADDITION OF CHRISTIANITY 63 

Finally, Christianity had awakened in a part of the 
ancient society a new hopefulness and energy and pro- 
ductive power even before the Germans had brought in 
the reinforcement of their vigorous life. How much this 
might have amounted to had the Germans not come, 
and had the conditions of the following age been favorable, 
cannot be said ; but it is a result deserving of notice both 
as showing the tendency of Christianity and as indicating 
undoubtedly one of the sources of a reviving civilization 
soon to come. 

The example of this influence of Christianity, to which 
attention has been most frequently called, is the con- 
trast between the contemporary pagan and Christian lit- 
eratures from the third century on. The pagan is more 
refined and polished, but it is empty and barren, spirit- 
less imitation of classic models. The Christian literature 
of the same generations is cruder and less elegant, but it 
is full of spirit and vigor and energetic life. There is 
something to be said and some purpose in saying it. 

In closing this account one cannot avoid recurring to 
what was implied at the outset. It is impossible not to 
feel the incompleteness of any statement of the influence 
of Christianity upon civilization. Some of the more ob- 
vious and apparent results can be mentioned, but its full 
work cannot be traced. This is mainly for the reason 
stated: its operation lies in the realm of the silent and 
unobserved forces which act upon the individual char- 
acter and the springs of action, but which can, in the 
nature of the case, leave no record of themselves for later 
time. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE GERMAN CONQUEST AND THE EALL OF ROME 

With the introduction of one more, the four chief 
sources of our civilization were brought together. The 
Germans had waited long. That restless movement of 
their tribes in search of new lands which overwhelmed 
the empire in the fifth century had begun five hundred 
years earlier. The invasion of the Cimbri and Teutones 
at the end of the second century b. c. had held Rome in 
terror for a decade, and Julius Caesar, fifty years later, had 
found his opportunity to begin the conquest of Gaul in 
expelling the already successful army of the German 
Ariovistus from its occupation of Gallic territory. If it 
had not been for the Romans the German occupation 
of western Europe would have followed at once, more 
slowly perhaps than when it actually occurred, but with- 
out a check. But now they had been forced to wait for 
centuries, learning always more and more of the wonders 
and riches of the desired lands, growing constantly more 
and more eager to possess them, striving, many genera- 
tions of them, to find some weak spot through which they 
might force their way, but always held back. At last 
their time came. 

The Germans were by nature restless and fond of ad- 
venture. There was overpopulation at home, and the 
lack of land to support their people, with their primi- 
tive methods of agriculture, was seriously felt. It was 
this necessity to find more land for their growing num- 
bers which was, beyond question, the impelling force in 
their earlier attacks and later conquest of the Roman 

64 



THE GERMAN CONQUEST 6$ 

Empire. But the first successful invasion, the first per- 
manent occupation of Roman territory was not brought 
about by either of these causes. 

Upon the great Germanic kingdom of the Goths, which 
had been formed by the genius of Ermanaric just after 
the middle of the fourth century and which occupied a 
considerable part of European Russia, stretching from the 
Don to the Danube, fell an invasion of the Huns. They 
were a Mongolian or Tartar race, frightful to the sight, 
skilled in their peculiar tactics, swift to attack, vanish- 
ing before the return blow, and they were too strong for 
the more civilized Goths. Of the two tribal divisions of 
the Gothic race the greater part of the Ostrogoths, or 
East Goths, submitted to the Huns, were incorporated 
in their empire, and remained subject to it and tributary 
to its army until that empire fell to pieces a century 
later. The Visigoths, however, fell back before the ad- 
vance of the Huns, and appeared on the Danube frontier 
as suppliants for the Roman protection. It was granted 
them and they were transported to the southern bank. 
It was a dangerous experiment, but all went well at first, 
and all might have continued to go well even with so 
great a risk. But the smallest risk is too great for a 
state rotten with political corruption. The opportunity 
for plunder was too great to be resisted by the officers 
in charge, and they forced the Goths to buy the food 
which should have been given them, and sold them back 
their hostages, and sold them back their arms. The trea- 
son which is latent in every form of the spoils doctrine 
could hardly go farther than this. The patience of a 
German race with arms in its hands under brutal mis- 
treatment was soon exhausted, and they burst into a 
flame of revolt, swept everything before them, and at 
last, far within the bounds of the empire, a hostile Ger- 
man tribe destroyed a Roman army and slew the Em- 
peror Valens. 



66 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

This crossing of the Danube frontier, in 376 a. d., and 
this battle of Hadrianople, in 378, are the events which 
mark the beginning of the permanent occupation of the 
Roman Empire by the German tribes. 

It was the beginning of the age of conquest, but the 
empire was already largely German. Julius Caesar had 
begun the practice of enlisting German auxiliaries in the 
Roman armies, and, although the practice had grown 
very slowly at first, in the later years it had assumed enor- 
mous proportions, until whole armies were German, and 
entire German tribes, under the command of their native 
chiefs, and preserving all their tribal organization, en- 
tered the Roman service. Such tribes had been settled 
in lands along the frontier on condition of keeping out 
all others. If possible, even larger numbers had been in- 
troduced as slaves. From the days of Marius on, in 
larger and smaller bodies, the influx had been constant 
until they were present everywhere — in the towns as 
house slaves, in the country as coloni bound to the soil. 
In the conquest these Germans already within the em- 
pire were no doubt a more important element than the 
records indicate. The indifference of the inhabitants to 
the German occupation, which is everywhere manifest, 
was very likely due in some part to the large number 
of Germans already around them, and, in some cases, 
as in the last invasion of Alaric, we can get a glimpse of 
the positive aid they rendered; in a larger number, un- 
questionably, of the cases which were recorded, we find 
them the bravest and most effective of Rome's defenders. 

The great Emperor Theodosius was able to restore order 
in the East and to hold the Visigoths in check as nomi- 
nal Roman subjects — indeed as faithful allies of his, but 
they retained as their own the lands which they had 
occupied in the Danube valley. On his death, in 395, 
they began to move again, incited perhaps by some change 
in the policy of the government towards them which 



THE GERMAN CONQUEST 6 J 

they regarded as a slight, impelled, more likely, by the 
race restlessness or by the ambition of the young Alaric, 
now just coming to the leadership. They ravaged Thrace, 
threatened Constantinople, turned south into Greece, 
past Athens, which was spared, and into the Peloponne- 
sus. Here Alaric was checked by the skill of Stilicho, 
the Vandal, guardian of the Western emperor, and, though 
not actually subdued, accepted bribes and titles and re- 
turned to the Danube valley. In a few years he was 
on the march again, this time towards the west. Once 
more Stilicho forced him back (402), but this time he 
took a position near the head of the Adriatic, from which 
it would be easy to turn in either direction as circum- 
stances might invite. 

In the meantime the storm was descending from every 
quarter. The fatal weakness of the empire in this final 
period, the want of an army, had made it necessary to 
call in a part of the frontier garrisons to meet the attack 
of Alaric. The frontiers could no longer be defended. 
One great horde of men, whose exact tribal relationships 
are not known, under command of Radagaisus, poured 
down from western Germany into the neighborhood of 
Florence (405). Here what seems to have been the main 
body was outgeneralled and annihilated by Stilicho, and 
inflicted no injury upon the empire, beyond the increased 
exhaustion which, in its weakened condition, followed 
every such strain. 

But far worse things than this were happening else- 
where in this opening decade of the fifth century — the 
most awful moment of the barbarian deluge. Britain, 
Gaul, and Spain, abandoned by their rightful defenders, 
harried by invading tribes and by revolted troops and the 
ephemeral emperors of their creation, fell out of the em- 
pire never to be recovered again except in name. An 
army of related tribes — Burgundians, Vandals, Suevi, 
Alani — broke through the Rhine frontier at the end of 



68 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the year 406, and after a few years of aimless plundering 
found permanent homes within the empire — the Burgun- 
dians in eastern Gaul, in lands which have retained their 
name, and as nominal subjects of the emperor, whose 
sanction they received, but in reality as an indepen- 
dent state. The other tribes passed through the Pyrenees 
into Spain, which they carved into kingdoms for them- 
selves, lasting with varying degrees of permanence. In 
the following year, 407, the last Roman troops aban- 
doned Britain to its fate and, following a new Constan- 
tine, whom they had proclaimed emperor, crossed over 
into Gaul to add to the confusion there. 

In Italy the tragedy of the empire drew rapidly to a 
climax. Stilicho, justly or unjustly, excited the suspi- 
cion of the Emperor Honorius and was put to death in 
408. Alaric's opportunity had come. Without a mo- 
ment's delay he swept into Italy, took possession of all 
the open country, and finally, in 410, stormed the city 
itself, now for almost a thousand years untouched by an 
enemy. What Alaric would have done with the penin- 
sula, now virtually his conquest, no one can say. As he 
was on the point of crossing over into Africa to com- 
pel that province to forward the usual food supplies 
to Rome, he died suddenly, and the Visigoths elected 
Athaulf, his brother-in-law, to be their king. He seems 
to have thought it hopeless to try to found a permanent 
kingdom in Italy and led his people into Gaul. There, 
without any formal alliance with the Romans, he married 
his prisoner, Placidia, the sister of Honorius, and aided 
to put down the usurping tyrants. After his death his 
successor, Wallia, formed a compact with the emperor, 
and recovered for the empire a part of the territory which 
had been occupied by the Germans in Spain, and finally, 
in 419, by a new treaty, the Visigoths received a perma- 
nent grant of land in southwestern Gaul, as nominal 
Roman subjects. This formed the beginning of the Visi- 



THE GERMAN CONQUEST 69 

gothic kingdom, which lasted until the invasion of the 
Saracens in the eighth century. From this beginning it 
gradually spread towards the north until it reached the 
Loire, and towards the south until it embraced the whole 
Spanish peninsula. As they had been the first to break 
the Roman frontier, so they were the first to found a 
permanent and recognized kingdom within the empire — ■ 
the recognized kingdom of the Burgundians being a year 
or two later. 

Nearly all the Germans who had settled in Spain were 
gradually conquered and absorbed in the Visigothic state. 
But the Vandals, in 429, abandoned their Spanish lands 
and crossed over into Africa. According to a doubtful 
story they were invited by a disaffected Roman governor; 
more likely they dreaded the approach of the Visigoths, 
who had, in their first invasion of Spain, destroyed a part 
of the Vandal race. In Africa they met with some vig- 
orous resistance, but in a few years had gained posses- 
sion of it all, and rapidly developed a naval power which 
became the terror of the Mediterranean, even as far as 
Constantinople. In 455 they seized the city of Rome 
and held it for a few days, sacking it more savagely than 
Alaric had done. 

Just at this time a danger far more serious than came 
from any German invasion threatened the dying empire 
— more serious because it would mean the triumph of a 
more hopeless Asiatic and Mongolian barbarism. The 
invasion of the Huns, which had set the Germans in 
motion, had resulted in the formation of a Hunnic em- 
pire north of the Danube, to which most of Germany was 
subject. Now a great king had come to the throne, At- 
tila, the. Scourge of God. Seemingly afire with that pur- 
poseless, senseless rage of conquest which has led more 
than one devastating Mongolian host, he fell, with his 
great army, in which many German nations were serving, 
on Gaul. But the Mongolians have never yet been able 



70 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

to do in the West what they have so often done in the 
East, in the way of almost unlimited conquest, and in 
Gaul his invasion was speedily stopped. Aetius, himself 
of barbarian descent, had succeeded in adding to the 
Roman army which he had brought together, the forces 
of the German states in Gaul, Visigoths, Burgundians, 
and Franks, persuaded that their own best interests were 
identical with Rome's. In the great battle of the na- 
tions which followed, in 451, in the Catalaunian plain, 
near Troyes, German and Roman stood together for Eu- 
ropean and Aryan civilization against Asiatic and Mon- 
golian, and saved the day. In the next year Attila in- 
vaded Italy, but almost at the beginning of his march 
turned back and retired to his own lands. Why we do 
not know, perhaps impressed by the solemn embassy of 
Pope Leo I, more probably hindered by some more ma- 
terial difficulty. Hardly had he reached home when he 
suddenly died, his empire fell to pieces, and the Germans, 
who had been subject to it, again became independent. 

In the years of Attila's invasions the Saxons were gain- 
ing their first permanent hold upon Britain. As early 
as the end of the third century their piratical attacks had 
begun. Exactly after the style of their relatives, the 
vikings of a later time, they had sailed along the coast 
and plundered any unguarded spot. The Romans had 
been obliged to organize a special coast-guard, under the 
count of the Saxon Shore, to protect the province from 
their raids. When the Roman troops left Britain to its 
fate, in 407, the Saxons soon found out their opportu- 
nity. The attacks of another enemy, the barbarian Celts 
of the north and west, upon the Romanized inhabitants, 
only made it easier for this more dangerous foe to gain 
a permanent foothold, even with the consent of the pro- 
vincials. But once landed they could not be kept within 
bounds. More and more came; many little kingdoms 
were founded, till almost the whole eastern and southern 



THE GERMAN CONQUEST 7 1 

shores were occupied. The resistance of the Celts to the 
advance of the Saxons seems to have been, however, much 
the most obstinate and stubborn which any German in- 
vasion encountered. The result of this was that the Ger- 
man newcomers did not settle themselves down here, 
as elsewhere, in the midst of a Roman population, which 
they treated to all intents and purposes as on an equal- 
ity with themselves, and which far outnumbered them. 
If the provincials were not actually exterminated or driven 
back, which seems improbable, they were reduced to a 
decidedly inferior position, very likely to slavery, so that 
they were able to exercise no such influence upon their 
conquerors as other provincials did. 1 

In the meantime Italy itself was lost to the empire, 
except for a brief recovery in the next century. The 
death of Valentinian III, in 455, whose capital indeed 
had not been at Rome but at Ravenna, had brought the 
house of Theodosius to an end. A rapid succession of 
powerless emperors followed, nearly all of them appointed 
and deposed by the leaders of the German troops, who 
were now the only protectors of Italy. Finally, the last 
of them, or the one who has been traditionally considered 
the last, Romulus nicknamed Augustulus, was deposed in 
476, and the leader of the Germans, Odovacar, deter- 
mined to appoint no successor. An embassy was sent to 
Constantinople to recognize Zeno as emperor of the re- 
united empire and to ask him to appoint Odovacar as 
his representative in Italy. This is the so-called Fall 
of the Western Empire; but it was not recognized as 
such by either the Eastern or the Western Romans, or 
by the Germans themselves, even though Odovacar's 
request had not been granted by Zeno. Odovacar ruled 

J That the Anglo-Saxons, however, continued some of the Roman ar- 
rangements, especially in the matter of the villa or farm organization, 
seems probable, and further investigation is likely to increase our knowledge 
of their indebtedness. 



72 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the Germans who were in Italy as their king, and he was 
at the head of a practically independent kingdom, but he 
did not understand that fact as clearly as we do, and, 
in the theory of the time, he was still commanding a 
Roman army and guarding a Roman province under the 
emperor. All the provinces of the Western Empire were 
now occupied by German kingdoms, except a fragment 
here and there; but all those on the continent still re- 
garded themselves as in the empire and acknowledged 
at least a nominal subjection to the emperor. 

Odovacar's reign was not long. On the breaking up of 
Attila's kingdom the Ostrogoths had been received into 
the empire and given lands south of the Danube. Here, 
more recently, they had become very troublesome under 
their young king Theodoric, and when he finally proposed 
to Zeno to recover Italy from Odovacar, the offer was 
readily accepted. The conquest was not altogether easy 
and occupied some years; but it was at last completed, 
and Odovacar was slain by the hand of Theodoric. The 
Ostrogothic kingdom thus established was the most re- 
markable of all the early German states. Theodoric had 
spent his early life as a hostage in Constantinople, and 
if he did not learn to read and write there, he learned 
many other things. If we may judge by the tendency of 
his reign, rather than by any specific acts which prove 
his policy beyond dispute, he seems to have recognized 
more consciously than any other barbarian king the fact 
that any permanent state must be based on a union of 
the two populations and the two civilizations in a new 
common nation. If it is impossible to show that he de- 
liberately sought such a union, it is certain that his policy, 
if it could have been continued for a generation or two 
longer, would have produced such a result. He continued 
in operation the Roman laws, judicial tribunals, adminis- 
trative system, and taxes. He divided lands among the 
Goths without exciting the hatred of the Romans, and 



THE GERMAN CONQUEST 73 

Romans and Goths served together in tribunals for the 
hearing of cases in which the parties were of the two 
peoples. Agriculture and commerce revived, means of 
communication were improved, and art and literature 
seemed to feel new life. Order was maintained, property 
was secure, and toleration enforced. But more than a 
single generation is needed to bring about a real union 
between two such widely differing races as these. Prog- 
ress under Theodoric was too rapid for endurance; in- 
deed, in many cases, it seemed to be more real than it 
actually was, and after his death discord and discontent, 
held down by the power of his will, revealed themselves 
rapidly. In another generation the Ostrogothic kingdom 
and the Ostrogothic race were things of the past. 

There had been a great recovery of strength in the 
empire in the East. The army had been improved and 
the finances set in order. And now the great Emperor 
Justinian had come to the throne with the ambition to 
restore the old control over the West, and to bring back 
as many of the provinces as possible to actual obedience. 
He had not merely an army and resources, but he had 
the no less necessary condition of success, one of the 
great generals of history, Belisarius. A quarrel in the 
Vandal royal family, the deposing of a king descended 
on the mother's side from the imperial house of Theo- 
dosius, gave him an opportunity to make his first attack 
on Africa, and in a brief campaign that province was 
restored to the empire. Then came the turn of Italy, 
and although the Goths made a most heroic resistance 
and were able to prolong the struggle for twenty years, 
the odds against them were too great. Their kingdom 
fell, and one of the most attractive of the early German 
nations disappeared from history, the few survivors join- 
ing the Visigoths in Spain. 

A very important result of this brief recovery of Italy 
by the Roman power was the introduction there, into use 



74 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

and into the schools, of the Justinian Code. The Ostro- 
goths had made use of the Theodosian Code for such 
Roman law as they had need of, and the other German 
states continued to do this. But now the more complete 
Justinian Code was brought to Italy and survived there 
to be made the foundation, after some centuries, of a 
renewed and most influential study of the Roman law, 
through all the West. 

The southern part of Italy was destined to remain 
under the government of the emperor at Constantinople 
for five hundred years, but the northern part was speed- 
ily lost. It was occupied, after fifteen years, by the 
Lombards, coming from the same region as the Ostro- 
goths, the last of the invasions of this period, and the 
last kingdom to be established on Roman soil. Their 
occupation of the north, however, was never complete. 
Venice remained independent, nominally under the em- 
peror; and Ravenna and a strip along the eastern coast 
and across to the western, including Rome, remained 
under the Roman governor, the exarch of Ravenna. 
Rome was gradually cut off from these other lands by 
the slow Lombard advance, and the opportunity was pre- 
sented to the bishops of Rome, which they were not slow 
to utilize, to become virtually independent and to found 
a little principality as temporal rulers. This forms an 
intimate part, however, of a wider current of events in 
the West which we must soon take up. 

One fact of very great importance for all this long pe- 
riod of conquest, but one easy to be overlooked in the 
history of more stirring events, is that the life of the 
provincial, on the country lands and in the towns, went 
on much the same as before. He was subjected to a 
rapid change of masters; he was deprived now and again 
of a part of his lands; he had to submit to occasional 
plundering; life and property were not secure. But he 
lived on and produced enough to keep the world alive. 



THE GERMAN CONQUEST 7$ 

He took himself no part in the wars. He had appar- 
ently little interest in the result; indeed, the coming in 
of the German was often an improvement of condition 
for him. He had not been altogether prosperous or se- 
cure before. At any rate, he kept at work, and he held 
to his language, and to his legal and economic customs, 
and to his religion, and he became thus a most important 
but disregarded factor of the future. 

Such is, in brief, and with a single exception, reserved 
for separate treatment, the history of the introduction of 
the German peoples into the classic world. As we pass 
in outline the history of this conquest we cannot avoid 
the question why this Roman power, which so short a 
time beforehand made the conquest of the world, was able 
to offer no more effectual resistance to these invaders. 
If we examine carefully the series of events, the imme- 
diate reason is not difficult to see. The Roman power 
was exhausted when the final attack came. There is no 
evidence that the German onset was in any decisive way 
more violent now than two centuries earlier, but at the 
middle of the second century the Romans were still able 
to repel the attack with success, if not easily. It would 
perhaps be more accurate to say that Marcus Aurelius, 
in his struggle with the Quadi and Marcomanni was the 
first to feel the growing exhaustion of the state, and the 
first to resort to the doubtful expedients so common 
later to maintain the strength of the army. But the 
state still appeared strong and was, in reality, strong 
enough for two centuries to come to keep off its enemies 
in some way. But at the end of the fourth century, even 
that appearance of strength was gone. The frontiers 
could no longer be guarded, the provinces were empty, 
the capital itself hardly defended. The Roman strength 
was exhausted. But in saying this we only remove the 
question one step farther back. What are the reasons 



76 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

why this Roman race, the strongest of the world up to 
this time, had declined so rapidly and now fell easily a 
prey to enemies it had once overcome? 

It is impossible to give in a few paragraphs any com- 
plete and accurate conception of the causes which led to 
the fall of Rome. Those causes were so numerous and so 
involved with one another in their action, they were at 
work through so long a time, the full understanding of 
their operation requires so extensive a knowledge of the 
laws which govern the economic and political action of 
men, that volumes would be required for a clear presen- 
tation of the subject. A brief account of the matter is 
made still further difficult from the fact that the fall of 
Rome has been very often made the subject of partial 
and incomplete treatment in order to prove some particu- 
lar point, perhaps to make vivid the contrast between the 
Christian church and the heathen society which it came 
to regenerate, perhaps to make manifest the political 
dangers which arise from the moral corruption of a people. 
Undoubtedly, the Christian church had a mission of re- 
generation of great importance for the ancient society, as 
well as for the individual, but no progress is made towards 
proving this fact by picturing the dark side of that so- 
ciety only, to the exclusion of all its virtues. Undoubt- 
edly, also, moral corruption is a most fruitful source of 
political ruin, but hardly in the way in which the profes- 
sional moralists would sometimes have us think. What 
can be attempted here is barely more than an enumera- 
tion, as complete as possible within these limits, of the 
various causes which worked together to undermine the 
strength of the Roman state. 

In general, it may be said, that these causes are the 
same as those which led to the overthrow of the republic 
and the establishment of the empire. Coming plainly 
into view by the close of the second Punic War, they con- 
tinue in operation through the whole later history un- 



THE GERMAN CONQUEST 77 

checked, or barely checked for the moment here and 
there, and bringing with them naturally other related 
causes and increasingly disastrous results. The estab- 
lishment of the empire at the beginning of the Christian 
era was undoubtedly, in the condition of things at the 
time, a political necessity, but that is not the same thing 
as saying that the causes which led to the fall of the re- 
public were beneficial causes ; and no one would probably 
seriously maintain, though some have seemed to imply as 
much, that the Romans would have found it impossible 
to adapt the government of the republic to the wider 
demands of the empire, had they preserved their earlier 
characteristics. The monarchy became a political neces- 
sity, not because the Romans were unable to govern the 
empire, but because they were no longer able to govern 
themselves, and the causes which had brought them to 
this pass continuing to act as before, in the end exhausted 
the power of the empire. That the republic fell under the 
influence of these causes in a much shorter time than 
the empire is an instance of the abundantly supported 
historical principle that political corruption and decline 
are far more dangerous to a democratic government than 
to a monarchy. 

The causes of the fall of Rome may be roughly divided 
into two great groups — first, the moral causes; second, 
the economic. It must be acknowledged, however, that 
this division is not a strictly scientific one. The two 
classes are not co-ordinate. The economic causes are 
more immediate in their action, those which are strictly 
moral causes are more indirect and remote. They are 
the causes of causes. The influence of personal immo- 
rality and corruption upon the state has often been made 
the subject of careless writing and sometimes of wild 
speculation and is a matter which needs more real in- 
vestigation than it has yet received. It seems to be al- 
together likely, however, that such an investigation will 



78 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

show that private vice becomes dangerous to the state 
only where it is translated into political corruption or 
economic disease, and that individual immorality may go 
very far — that it has gone in some actual cases, indeed, 
almost if not quite as far as among the Romans — without 
involving the destruction of the state, if it does not af- 
fect the public life or the economic resources of the na- 
tion. It is because certain forms of personal vice trans- 
late themselves so quickly and easily into public causes 
that the morals of its citizens are of importance to the 
state, as a matter of self-protection. 

The vices which were especially prevalent among the 
Romans were precisely of this sort. These were, in the 
first place, the physical vices — drunkenness, gluttony, and 
licentiousness. It is entirely impossible to give any de- 
tailed account of the condition of a large portion of the 
Roman society in these respects. Fortunately, it is not 
necessary. The description has been so often attempted 
for one purpose or another and has been made so frank 
and unreserved, that a popular impression has been un- 
doubtedly created that these vices were far more universal 
and extreme throughout the Roman world than they 
really were. No doubt they did affect certain classes of 
the population — the country people, the middle classes 
where these still existed — to a greater extent than a cor- 
responding condition would in modern times, because, for 
one reason, of the existence of slavery, and yet it is cer- 
tain that the extreme cases and the most injurious re- 
sults are to be found in the large cities and among the 
wealthy class, while the provinces and the middle classes 
were comparatively uncontaminated. It seems probable, 
however, though by no means certain, that the influence 
of these vices did extend far enough to affect the national 
life. Their influence upon the race, where it is felt, is 
precisely the same as that upon the individual. Energy, 
will-power, self-reliance in the face of danger are lost, 



THE GERMAN CONQUEST 79 

and the recuperative and reproductive power declines or 
disappears. These are exactly the results which appeared, 
from some cause, throughout the Roman Empire in its 
last age. It is a remarkable fact, to which attention has 
been called, that, though many of the Roman towns were 
still strongly walled, and though the Germans were very 
unskilled in the art of siege, yet, while numbers of the 
towns maintain themselves for a time, there are few in- 
stances during the whole period of the conquest of heroic 
resistance to the invaders by the population of the prov- 
inces. It is almost always a barbarian general and a bar- 
barian army which undertakes the defence; or, where we 
find a case of a different sort, as in the defence of Orleans 
against the Huns, there is manifestly present a new ele- 
ment of energy and self-reliance not supplied by the 
Roman society proper, but by the Christian portion of 
it. Such a decline of the national will-power it would 
hardly be correct to trace to the operation of this one 
physical influence alone, and it is altogether likely that 
no such effect would have followed had not this cause 
been combined with others which are to be noticed later. 
Yet it must be kept in mind that this influence when 
present is usually a decisive one and may have contrib- 
uted as much, or more, than any other single force to 
the common result. So the other results which followed 
from this group of moral causes — decline of population, 
inability to recover losses from plagues and famines, de- 
struction of capital, indifference to public affairs — are 
perhaps best looked at among the economic causes, where 
they naturally appear. It is into economic causes, prop- 
erly speaking, that the physical vices translate themselves 
when they affect the public life. 

To this group of causes we must add the operation of 
the intense and desperate struggle for wealth which began 
under the republic and continued under the empire — a less 
conspicuous feature, perhaps of the later period, but not 



80 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

less fatal in its effects. Some later times have probably 
seen as inordinate a passion for wealth as the Roman, 
and as crafty scheming to get it without earning it, and 
this condition of things, as in the case of the physical 
vices, seems to become a serious danger to the state only 
when it is translated, when it leads to the misuse of 
official position or legislative power. The peculiar cir- 
cumstances of the last age of the republic made this 
translation into a political cause extremely easy, almost 
unavoidable. The government of lately conquered prov- 
inces, to be exploited for the benefit of the state, offered 
a secure opportunity for extortion and peculation which 
the official, trained in the spirit of the time, could hardly 
resist. Decided reformation in this regard was certainly 
made under the empire, but the spirit and the practice 
never disappeared. It was a source of great weakness 
to the empire in the days of decline and a fatal obstacle 
to thorough reformation that so large a proportion of the 
official class looked upon their offices as a source of gain 
or advancement and were ready on any occasion to sacri- 
fice the interests of the state to their own private interests. 1 
When we turn to the economic causes which aided in 
the fall of Rome we stand appalled at their number and 
variety. It would seem as if, when the empire had once 
started on the downward path, all things worked together 
against it and all the springs of national prosperity were 
poisoned. It is possible here to point out only the most 
important of these causes, and, in such a brief account, 
we shall find our way to a clear understanding only if we 
remember that the immediate cause of the fall of Rome 
was exhaustion — exhaustion of resources and exhaustion 
of population. There are to be grouped together, then, 
the most decisive causes which show how the accumu- 
lated capital of the empire — in property and in men — 

1 See above, p. 65, the extremely important instance at the crossing of 
the Danube by the Visigoths. 



THE GERMAN CONQUEST 8 1 

came to be destroyed, and why no more was produced 
to take its place. 

Slavery is naturally the first among these causes to 
occur to mind, and, whatever may have been the moral 
dangers of the Roman slave system, the economic evils 
which it worked were still more fatal to the state. In 
the first place, it was a system wasteful and unproduc- 
tive of men. By it a large part of the natural population 
of the empire, for this was probably, even in the later 
times, the chief source of slaves, was placed in a condi- 
tion not merely where it was used up and disappeared 
with fearful rapidity, but also where it tended to repro- 
duce itself much less rapidly than it would have done as 
a body of free laborers. In this way there was probably 
always a considerable loss of population, certainly the 
slave system went far to prevent what should have been 
the normal increase and to make it impossible to recover 
sudden losses of population, such as occurred in times of 
pestilence. Slavery is also an expensive means of pro- 
duction. The returns on the capital invested, except in 
unusual conditions, are small, and the incentive to im- 
provement in methods of production extremely slight. 
The history of our Southern States since the Civil War, 
as compared with their earlier history, shows this con- 
clusively. And it destroys capital with great rapidity. 
Economically, the slave is merely a machine. The use of 
a machine tends to destroy it. But when a modern 
steam-engine is destroyed it is easily and quickly replaced 
and the total loss to the capital of the generation in ma- 
terial rendered useless is not great. Much of it may be 
used over again to make some new machine. But when 
the slave was used up not merely was so much capital 
destroyed but a part of the total productive force of the 
generation was permanently annihilated. It could not 
be replaced. The slave system invested a large propor- 
tion of the capital of the empire in a relatively unprofi- 



82 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

table form and tended to use up rapidly its productive 
force. Again, the slave system tended to extinguish the 
class of free laborers both in city and country. In the 
cities it did this by supplying the demand for labor of 
all kinds and by making labor odious — never, perhaps, 
to such an extent as in our Southern States, but still in a 
marked degree. In the country it gave the capitalist 
advantage over the small landowner in a variety of ways 
and made it easy to drive him to the wall and to swallow 
up his holding. As a result, although the class of small 
cultivators never entirely disappeared, yet in some parts 
of the empire very few were left, and vast estates culti- 
vated by slave labor were formed everywhere, and the 
middle class, the solid resource of every state, tended to 
disappear between the very wealthy on one side and the 
slave class and the city rabble on the other. It must 
be remembered, however, that the positive evil effects of 
slavery were felt more decisively in the earlier than in 
the later period of the empire. As the empire drew to an 
end, the economic conditions were forcing upon it, un- 
consciously but inevitably, the extinction of slavery — its 
transformation into serfdom, and, although this transfor- 
mation was not completed in Roman days, 1 it had gone 
far enough to survive the German conquest, and far enough 
to be a decided gain both to the state and to the slave. 

Another economic cause of primary importance was the 
public games and the free distribution of food, especially 
the latter. The public games were a great drain upon 
the resources of the state, but the food donatives were 
a more serious evil. The distribution of wheat to the 
poorer citizens at a price below the market price, which 
was begun towards the end of the second century b. c. 
as a demagogic measure, could not well be stopped. 
One demagogue bid against another and the empire was 

1 Indeed, slavery did not entirely disappear from Europe during the 
middle ages. 



THE GERMAN CONQUEST 83 

obliged to continue the practice. It resulted finally in 
the regular distribution of baked loaves of bread, and 
occasionally at least of oil, wine, meat, and clothes, and 
it was extended gradually from the capital to the larger 
provincial cities, and even to the smaller towns. The 
worst effect of it was not that it maintained in the towns 
an unemployed mob, hard to be used for any good pur- 
pose but easy to be excited by any demagogic appeal. 
Two results followed, which were even more fatal. In 
the first place, the government, at public expense, pre- 
sented a constant temptation to the middle class to aban- 
don the struggle for existence and to sink into the pro- 
letariat. The hard-pressed poor farmer who saw all his 
toil fail to improve his condition was easily persuaded 
to escape from the grinding competition into the town 
and into a class entirely unproductive, or which produced 
only the least possible. But the decline of production 
was not all. A continually increasing portion of the 
wealth produced each year by the classes which remained 
productive was destroyed without adding anything to the 
permanent capital of the empire. The products of the 
provinces were drained into the towns and sent nothing 
back — the expense being met by a taxation which rested 
chiefly on the land itself. In normal conditions the prod- 
ucts of the farm go into the city. But while the artisan 
is eating the wheat he is making cloth, which goes back 
to the farm containing the total value of the wheat. But 
in Rome the economic result was precisely the same as 
if the government had collected the products of the farm 
in a heap and burned them. That is to say, at the mo- 
ment when the empire needed most of all to build up a 
middle class and to encourage the accumulation of re- 
sources, the state was, by its own act, destroying the one 
and making the other impossible. 

Another one of those causes which is commonly con- 
sidered of importance was the heavy and expensive taxa- 



84 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

tion. It seems doubtful, however, whether the taxation 
of the empire was heavier or, indeed, as heavy as that 
of most modern states. If there had been general pros- 
perity and the production and saving of wealth which 
ought to have existed, it is probable that a heavier bur- 
den of taxation could have been borne without serious 
inconvenience. 1 It was the disordered economic condi- 
tion which rendered the taxation injurious, as it undoubt- 
edly was. To this must be added the expensive method 
of collection. The indirect taxes were farmed out — a 
method which makes the collection a private speculation 
and extorts from the people much larger sums than the 
government receives. The land taxes were no longer 
farmed, but the responsibility for collecting them and 
turning them over to the government was placed upon 
the local community of larger landowners — a method 
which lent itself readily to injustice and oppression, and 
which made the prosperous and thrifty man pay the taxes 
of his unsuccessful neighbor. 2 

To these more striking causes may be added a consid- 
erable group of hardly less effective ones. A debased 
currency constantly fluctuating in value and growing 
more scanty. A constant drain of the precious metals 
— currency and capital — into the oriental states to pay 
for luxuries of dress and food, unproductive and soon de- 
stroyed. A declining fertility of soil, which with the in- 
creasing lack of capital could not be restored. A dimin- 
ishing supply of laborers, felt severely in many places by 
the large landowners, and which led to the systematic 
introduction of barbarians by the government. A still 

1 The history of many American cities shows that a burden of taxation, 
probably higher than rested on the Romans under the empire, can be borne 
without serious results — shows, indeed, how high taxation, in some cases at 
least, is an unavoidable result and a sign of great prosperity and rapid growth. 

8 See in Taine's Ancient Regime, book V, chap. II, an interesting account 
of the methods and results of a similar system of tax collection in France 
in the eighteenth century. 



THE GERMAN CONQUEST 85 

more dangerous incorporation of barbarians into the army 
from a similar lack of men. Natural calamities, pesti- 
lences, and earthquakes, which certainly might fall upon 
any state, but which in the empire left permanent holes 
in the population, while an economically healthy state 
would have entirely recovered such losses in a generation 
or two. A declining police and military protection, seen 
in such facts as the often-told story of the Frankish pris- 
oners of the Emperor Probus, 1 or in the occasional inroad 
of a German tribe which committed irreparable damage 
before it could be subdued. 

Much of this means that the task which Rome had 
undertaken, or which had been in a way forced upon her, 
of bringing the world up to her level had proved in the 
end too great for her civilizing and absorbing power. 
She had too scanty resources in men to continue indefi- 
nitely lifting quickly above themselves the barbarians 
bordering on the empire or constantly streaming into it. 
For it is population which is the absorbing material. It 
has been said that if Rome could have conquered and 
civilized the Germans as she had the Gauls, the empire 
would never have fallen. That is true, but that is ex- 
actly what Rome could not do, and found she could not 
even in the first Christian century. At the Rhine and the 
Danube, Rome reached not merely the limits of her geo- 
graphical empire but of the empire of her civilization. 
The Germans gained immensely from their contact with 
Rome, but with their advent the current began to flow 
backward. / They rose in civilization far more quickly 
than they otherwise could have done, but in the process 
the civilizing force was reduced and greatly diluted, and 
the civilization of the world was lowered. 

Enough has been said to show the direction in which 

1 Transported by the emperor to the region of the Black Sea, they seized 
upon some ships and made their way through the length of the Mediter- 
ranean, attacking cities, and apparently meeting little resistance; finally they 
passed out into the Atlantic and reached their home in the Rhine valley. 



86 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the causes of the fall of the Roman Empire are to be 
sought, and to show that long study and a full account 
are necessary to any adequate presentation of them. 
They lay deep, at the very foundation of society, as is 
evident from the fact that in periods of tranquillity and 
apparent strength, as under the good emperors in the 
second century, or in the fourth century from Constan- 
tine to the breaking of the Danube frontier, there was no 
recovery, no trustworthy return of strength, rather when, 
at the close of such a period, the real test came, the 
empire was found to be weaker than before. 

I have used throughout the expression "fall of Rome" 
as a convenient phrase. But if the nature of the disease 
from which the empire suffered has been correctly indi- 
cated, the term is clearly an incorrect one. Rome did 
not fall. She was overthrown. Her strength was ex- 
hausted, but it was the attack which was fatal. But for 
that she could undoubtedly have recovered. The word 
overthrown, in turn, conveys too strong an impression. 
The empire was at the moment empty and the Germans 
entered in and took possession. 

It is, indeed, a serious mistake to regard this revolu- 
tion exclusively from the standpoint of a "fall," as if it 
were merely the destruction of the ancient civilization. 
It was something far more than that. 1 It was the neces- 

1 The continuance of the empire in the East through these early centuries 
of the middle ages, maintaining a degree of civilization superior to any- 
thing in the contemporary West, must not be forgotten. It acted for long 
generations as a barrier against invasions from the farther East, and upon 
certain individual features of civilization, especially upon art, it was a 
direct source of beneficent influence. Mr. Frederic Harrison, in the Rede 
lecture of Cambridge University for 1900, included in revised form in his 
Among My Books (191 2), has stated the case for the "Empire of New 
Rome" as strongly as the facts will permit. The general impression which 
the lecture makes concerning the influence of Byzantine civilization upon 
the West, as distinguished from the statement of specific facts, is, indeed, 
something of an exaggeration. There are few cases in which the Eastern 
Empire can be shown to have done more than to preserve and transmit. 



THE GERMAN CONQUEST 87 

sary reorganization and rearrangement preparatory to a 
new and higher civilization. From this point of view the 
period of the fall of Rome was an age of progress. It 
was not merely an age of "fall," but also of conquest, 
and this fact, along with the establishment of Christian- 
ity, is the vitally important fact of these centuries. But 
it is so because it was something more than a mere con- 
quest. The Germans brought with them race charac- 
teristics and ideas and institutions which, though they 
were those of a primitive people, were noble and well 
developed, able to enter into a competition with those of 
a higher civilization on something like equal terms. Add 
the fact that the Teutonic race became the ruling race of 
Christendom, and we can understand how it came to be 
one of the determining sources of our civilization and how 
the period of the "fall of Rome" is one of the great con- 
structive ages of history. 



CHAPTER V 

WHAT THE GERMANS ADDED 

In passing to the special consideration of the additions 
which the Germans made to the ancient civilization, it is 
necessary to give the first place to what was probably 
their most valuable contribution, the Germans them- 
selves. This implies not merely that the governments 
which they set up in the place of the Roman were, in 
very many cases, an improvement upon the practical an- 
archy which passed under the name of the empire, and 
a welcome relief to the provincials, as they were, but also 
that there was a more permanent influence introduced in 
the fact that they brought in a young, vigorous, and 
healthy race to form a considerable element in the popu- 
lation of every European state. It is possible that in 
some parts of the empire the number of new settlers was 
not large, and yet it has been said of each of the Latin- 
speaking countries that it contains districts where the 
German physical characteristics — light hair and blue eyes 
— still predominate among the inhabitants and indicate 
a large Teutonic immigration. The amount of German 
blood which went to form the modern nations must have 
been considerable, for we need to add to the invading 
forces the large numbers settled in the empire earlier as 
slaves and soldiers. The German was, to be sure, a 
savage, and it may be that his bringing in brought in also 
greater ignorance and decline and "darkness" than would 
otherwise have been; but in the existing conditions this 
was a necessity, and the results justify the cost. Pos* 

88 



WHAT THE GERMANS ADDED 89 

sibly, as has been intimated, the Roman world might 
have recovered its strength and entered upon a new age 
of production without their aid. But had it done so, 
even more successfully than seems at all probable, the 
product would have lacked the qualities added by the 
Germans. The settlement of the Teutonic tribes was 
not merely the introduction of a new set of ideas and 
institutions to combine with the old, it was also the in- 
troduction of fresh blood and youthful mind, the muscle 
and the brains which were in the future to do the larger 
share of the world's work. 

Besides the addition of themselves they brought with 
them, as a decided characteristic of the race, a very high 
idea of personal independence, of the value and impor- 
tance of the individual man as compared with the state. 
This can be seen in the proud spirit of the individual 
warrior — a characteristic of many barbarian races. It 
can be seen still more clearly in another characteristic of 
barbarian races in those crude systems of criminal jus- 
tice out of which these tribes were just emerging in the 
migration period. They exhibit the injured man appar- 
ently never thinking that the public authority is the 
proper power to punish the wrong-doer, but taking the 
punishment into his own hands as the only natural resort 
in such a case. It can be seen again in the fact that 
when the state does begin to assume the right to punish 
crime, it cannot venture to inflict personal chastisement, 
or to interfere with the liberty of the freeman. It must 
limit itself to imposing money fines, part of which goes 
to the injured party as indicative of his rights in the case, 
and it can be seen finally in the democratic cast of all 
their earliest governments. The unit of the whole public 
life is the individual man, not the state. 

We have seen in the third chapter how the early Chris- 
tianity taught a closely related idea; how it proclaimed 
certain rights and interests of the individual to be far 



90 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

higher and more important than any duties he could owe 
the state. How much the one set of these ideas reinforced 
the other it is impossible to say. We can trace their con- 
tinued influence only by way of inference. Somewhere 
between the ancient days and the present the idea of the 
relation of the individual to the state has been trans- 
formed. In the ancient time the state was an end in and 
for itself far more than it has ever been in the modern. 
To the Greek or the Roman the state was everything, the 
individual comparatively nothing. His domestic and re- 
ligious life, as well as his political, found their ultimate 
object in the state. Now, the state is regarded as a 
means rather than an end. Its object is thought to be 
to secure for the individual the fullest and freest develop- 
ment possible in a community life, and the state which 
secures this with the least governing and the least ma- 
chinery is held to be the best state. Whether this view 
of the state is to be a permanent one or not, even if, as 
some vaguely expect, the modern state should be destined 
to give way in the end to some more highly organized 
form of common action than history has yet known, still 
the change which put the modern in the place of the 
ancient idea would remain one of the most important 
changes in the history of civilization, and the question 
of the reasons for it one of the most interesting ques- 
tions. The natural influence of Christian teaching and 
German spirit working together would seem to be to 
lead to such a transformation. That they did actually 
do so is far easier to assert than to prove. Probably the 
most that can be said confidently is this: The idea of 
the independence and supreme worth of the . individual, 
so strongly felt and expressed in the early medieval cen- 
turies passes almost wholly out of the consciousness of 
the later middle ages except partially upon the political 
side where a closely related idea — which grew, in part, 
it seems likely, out of this earlier one— finds expression 



WHAT THE GERMANS ADDED 9 1 

in feudalism. But, in general, the individual ceases to be 
the primary element of society and is absorbed, not now 
in the state, but in the corporation, the guild, the com- 
mune, the order, the hierarchy. The revival of the older 
idea in modern times is to be traced with certainty only 
to two sources. One is that revolution of the whole 
intellectual standpoint of the middle ages which was 
wrought by the Renaissance and the Reformation, recov- 
ering Christian as well as classical ideas which had long 
been lost, emphasizing again the supreme worth of the 
individual and establishing the right of private judg- 
ment. The other is the gradual development of the 
primitive German institutions into modern free govern- 
ments. These two together form most important sources 
of the renewal of the democratic spirit which is so char- 
acteristic of our age, and, with that, of the emphasis 
which we again lay on the individual man and his rights. 1 

Of the new elements introduced by the Germans, 
whose continued life and influence we can most clearly 
trace to our own time, the most important were political 
and institutional. 

The Germans were passing at the time of their con- 

1 That this transformation was aided also by economic causes, such, for 
example, as the influence of the colonies upon the old world, is no doubt 
true, but it is not possible to do more at present than to point out the 
probability. Many of the demands of the workman of to-day are mani- 
festly quite as much due to the spread of democratic ideas as to any direct 
economic cause. 

The text refers, of course, to the rights of the individual as expressed in 
the practical and institutional life of the community rather than in theo- 
retical and speculative treatises. The emphatic and repeated statement of 
the rights of the individual, as against the ruler, by the Jesuits of the six- 
teenth century, for instance, was of no value in the historical development of 
liberty. Undoubtedly the political contrivances by which we secure for 
the individual the greatest possible freedom under an efficient government 
are, in the main, the outgrowth of the German institutions which are con- 
sidered in the following paragraphs. But the question is: What was the 
original source and whence the constant reinforcement of the spirit which 
defended and developed these primitive institutions? 



gl MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

tact with the Romans through a stage of political devel- 
opment through which the classical nations had passed 
long before. The political arrangements of the primitive 
Germans of Tacitus were in many ways very closely like 
those of the primitive Greeks of Homer. But in the 
case of the Germans the race possessed so solid and con- 
servative a political character, and these primitive insti- 
tutions had received such definiteness of form that they 
were able to survive for centuries the danger of absorp- 
tion and annihilation which faced them in the more 
highly developed Roman institutions, and, through some 
channels at least, permanently to influence the public life 
of the world. And while the classical nations, starting 
from the same beginning, failed to construct successful 
and permanent free governments, but ended in a uni- 
versal despotism in which such of the forms of free gov- 
ernment as survived had lost all meaning, in the history 
of the Teutonic nations, on the contrary, the experience 
of absolute monarchy, through which the germs of liberty 
were destined to pass, did not destroy their life or more 
than temporarily check their growth. 

It may be said in general that the Germans brought 
in some of the more important of the elements out of 
which the intervening centuries have developed modern 
free constitutional governments. But these elements are 
to be recognized as clearly democratic much more plainly 
in the Germany of Tacitus than in the states which were 
established on Roman soil. It is evident that the con- 
quest exposed them to a double danger. In the first 
place, in those countries where the Germans settled down 
in the midst of a Roman population they were exposed 
to the example of the Roman government and to the in- 
fluence of the Roman state machinery, important parts of 
which were often allowed to continue in operation at least 
for a time, both these tending to impress on the barbarian 
ruler the value of centralization and absolutism. The 



WHAT THE GERMANS ADDED 93 

importance of this influence has been disputed by some 
scholars, but impartial investigation leaves no doubt that 
due to the Roman example there was a strong tendency 
to increase the power of the king at the expense of the 
people. In the second place, the influence of the con- 
quest itself was in the same direction. It exposed the 
tribe to greater dangers than it had ever before experi- 
enced, it planted it in the midst of a conquered popula- 
tion more numerous than itself, it demanded that the 
whole power of the state should be wielded by a single 
will and to a single purpose. The tendency of dangerous 
crises in the life even of the freest nation is towards cen- 
tralization. This result is seen everywhere in these new 
states, with especial clearness in the case of the Anglo- 
Saxons, where the first-mentioned cause — the Roman 
example — had no opportunity to work. The fact must 
therefore be distinctly recognized that the first develop- 
ment which these German institutions underwent was 
away from liberty and towards absolutism. 

Of these original institutions three are of especial im- 
portance and interest in their bearing upon later times, 
and these are selected for specific notice. 

First, the public assemblies. The early Germans had 
assemblies of two grades. The highest in grade was the 
assembly of all the freemen of the tribe, according to 
Tacitus, which we may call the tribal or national assembly. 
This possessed distinct legislative rights, like a market 
democracy, at least so much as a right of decision for or 
against important measures submitted to it by a smaller 
council of elders or chiefs. In it were elected the kings, 
when necessary, and the chiefs of the smaller districts, 
and it also acted on occasion as a judicial tribunal for the 
hearing and decision of such cases as might be brought 
before it. It would seem as if this assembly would fur- 
nish a most promising beginning, which ought to grow 
into a free and national system of legislation. As a matter 



94 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

of fact it did not. The national assembly was one of the 
earliest victims of the centralizing tendency, and every- 
where sank into a mere form or entirely disappeared. 
This was as true of England as of any continental state, 
and though it is probable that the smaller assembly of 
chiefs, the concilium principum, which accompanied the 
national assembly, remained through the successive 
changes of government and of its own composition until 
it grew into the House of Lords, even this is not per- 
fectly certain. It is, however, for our present purpose, 
a matter of no importance whether it did or not, for, 
whatever its origin, the assembly of notables under the 
Norman and early Angevin kings was no longer in any 
sense a public assembly, nor did it have in any true 
sense a representative character or independent legisla- 
tive power. 

The origin of the modern representative system can- 
not be determined with any certainty, but for any pos- 
sible early source we must turn to the assemblies of the 
second grade in the original German states. In these the 
freemen of the smaller locality — the hundred or canton 
— came together in a public meeting which possessed, no 
doubt, legislative power over matters purely local, but 
whose most important function seems to have been ju- 
dicial — a local court, presided over by a chief, who an- 
nounced the verdict, which, however, derived its validity 
from the decision of the assembly, or, in later times, of 
a number of their body appointed to act for the whole. 
These local courts, probably, as has been suggested, 1 be- 
cause of the comparatively restricted character of the 
powers which they possessed, were destined to a long 
life. On the Continent they lasted until the very end of 
the middle ages, when they were generally overthrown 
by the introduction of the Roman law, too highly scien- 
tific for their simple methods. In England they lasted 
1 Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, vol. I, p. 92. 



WHAT THE GERMANS ADDED 95 

until they furnished the model, and possibly the sugges- 
tion, for a far more important institution — the House of 
Commons. How many grades of these local courts there 
were on the continent below the national assembly is a 
matter of dispute. In England there was in the later 
days of the Saxon state a series of three. The lowest 
was the township assembly, concerned only with matters 
of very slight importance and surviving still in the En- 
glish vestry meeting and the New England town meeting. 1 
Above this was the hundred's court into which entered, 
at least in early Norman times, a distinctly representative 
element, the assembly containing, together with other 
men, four representatives sent from certain townships. 
Then, third, the tribal assembly of the original little set- 
tlement, or the small kingdom of the early conquest, 
seems to have survived when this kingdom was swallowed 
up in a larger one, and to have originated a new grade in 
the hierarchy of assemblies, the county assembly or shire 
court. At any rate, whatever may have been its origin, 
and whatever may be the final decision of the vigorously 
disputed question, whether in the Frankish state there 
were any assemblies or courts for the counties distinct 
from the courts of the hundreds, it is certain that courts 
of this grade came into existence in England and were 
of the utmost importance there. In them, too, the rep- 
resentative principle was expressed, townships of the shire 
being represented, as in the hundred's court, by four 
chosen representatives. These courts, also, passed essen- 
tially unchanged through the English feudal and abso- 
lutist period, at least into the second half of the thir- 
teenth century, maintaining local self-government and 

1 There may be a question as to how strongly this connection between 
the New England town meeting and the local assembly of the primitive 
Germans should be asserted, because of the lack of direct evidence for some 
of the intermediate links. But while this want of evidence, in exact docu- 
mentary shape, must be admitted, it is certainly hypercriticism to refuse, 
in consequence, to admit the overwhelming probability of such a connection. 



96 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

preserving more of the primitive freedom than survived 
elsewhere. It is possible at a later time that the repre- 
sentative principle originating in them was transferred to 
the national legislature, creating our modern national 
representative system — the most important single con- 
tribution to the machinery of government made in his- 
toric times, with the possible exception of federal govern- 
ment. 

The first of the special political elements brought in 
by the Germans is, then, the public assembly, the orig- 
inal germ from which our modern free legislatures may 
have grown. 

The second one of these special elements to be noticed 
is the elective monarchy. The freemen of all the early Ger- 
man tribes clearly possessed, or had at one time possessed, 
the right of electing their king. In all these tribes, how- 
ever, the tendency was just as clearly towards the establish- 
ment of hereditary succession. It depended entirely upon 
the special circumstances of each case whether the forms 
of an election, preserved everywhere for a considerable 
time, sank into mere forms without meaning, and finally 
out of sight, or whether they retained life and meaning 
and became recognized as constitutional. 

In Germany an accidental circumstance — the fact that 
no dynasty lasted for more than three or four generations 
— kept alive the principle of election until it resulted in a 
real elective monarchy; but, owing to another circum- 
stance — the loss on the part of the royal power itself of 
all control over the state — this fact had no valuable re- 
sults for liberty. In France an accidental circumstance 
again — the fact that for more than three hundred years 
after the election of the Capetian family to the throne, 
it never lacked a direct male heir, had the opposite result, 
and the principle of election passed entirely out of sight 
and the monarchy became strictly hereditary. In En- 
gland the monarchy also became, in time, strictly heredi- 



WHAT THE GERMANS ADDED 97 

tary, and the original right of election disappeared. But 
the principle did not pass entirely out of remembrance, 
and later, though with no apparent connection with the 
earlier principle, a series of doubtful successions and of 
depositions created a new elective right, or what is far 
more important, its corollary, the right of the people to 
depose an unsatisfactory king and put another in his 
place. An idea of this kind, but plainly feudal in origin, 
seems to have been recognized by some, at least in the 
contest for the crown between Stephen and Matilda, to- 
wards the middle of the twelfth century; less consciously 
in the deposition of Edward II in 1327; more clearly in 
the case of Richard II in 1399, and at the end of the 
Yorkist line in 1485, in both these cases the rightful heirs 
being set aside in favor of others. It came to the fullest 
consciousness and the clearest expression in the Revolu- 
tion of 1688, and in the accession of the House of Han- 
over in 1 71 5. These cases established definitely in the 
British Constitution the principle that the sovereign ob- 
tains his right to rule from the consent of the people, 
and this has been distinctly recognized by the princes of 
the House of Hanover. It will be seen at once that this 
is a vitally important principle if a monarchy is to be 
transformed into what is virtually a republican govern- 
ment. Without the clear recognition of this principle, 
explicitly or implicitly, by the reigning sovereign, it would 
be impossible to continue a historic line of kings at the 
head of a republic, the object which is sought, and more 
or less completely secured, by all modern constitutional 
monarchies. 1 

1 That this principle has no immediate bearing on the Constitution of the 
United States is evident. But if we turn back to 1776 it may be clearly 
seen that it was regarded as one of the most important principles which 
justified the Revolution. The Declaration of Independence, after enu- 
merating the acts of tyranny on the part of the king, says: "A Prince whose 
character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit 
to be the ruler of a free People." This sentence states explicitly the fact 



98 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

The third element of free government originating with 
the Germans was an independent or self-developing sys- 
tem of law. The law systems of all the Germans at the 
time of the invasion were very crude, both in the law itself 
and in the method of its enforcement, but they were all 
characterized alike by this fact that the law was ascer- 
tained, denned, and declared by the courts, or, in other 
words, since the courts were public assemblies, by the 
people themselves. It follows necessarily from this that 
the courts, by establishing precedents, by declaring cus- 
toms which had grown up in the community to have the 
force of law, and by applying the common judgment and 
sense of justice of the people to new cases, as they arose, 
were constantly enlarging the body of the law and build- 
ing up by a natural process of growth a great body of 
customary or common law — unwritten law. The impor- 
tance of this practice as an element of liberty does not 
consist in the law itself which is created in this way. 
That is apt to be unscientific and experimental. It con- 
sists in the fact that the law is not imposed upon the 
people by a power outside itself, and declared and en- 
forced by a series of irresponsible agents, but that the 
people themselves make it and also interpret, modify, 
and enforce it. This practice continued in vigorous life 

that a free people may have a king, and with equal clearness the principle 
that if he is unfit he may be set aside. It is worthy of notice that, in that 
part of the Declaration which is really Anglo-Saxon in origin and spirit, this 
is the only statement made of any principle which justifies the Revolution, 
the body of the Declaration consists of evidence to prove the unfitness 
asserted. 

It will be noticed that this special Anglo-Saxon principle is only a form 
of the broader right of revolution. The historical line sketched above 
merely represents the channel through which the race has been brought to 
a practical consciousness of the broader principle. Its peculiar historical 
significance, however, does not lie in that fact, since the race must inevi- 
tably have become conscious, as all races have, of the right of revolution. 
It lies in the fact that it has led to the formation of a constitutional theory 
in monarchical states, which if cordially accepted by the sovereign, tends to 
do away with the necessity of revolution. 



WHAT THE GERMANS ADDED 99 

in the continental states much longer than any other of 
the specific institutions mentioned, and, together with the 
popular courts which gave it expression, preserved some 
remains of freedom long after it had entirely disappeared 
from every other part of the state. In the last part of 
the middle ages the adoption of the Roman law, and the 
system of scientific jurisprudence which that law fostered, 
practically destroyed on the Continent these self-devel- 
oping bodies of law. 1 When the control of the courts 
passed into the hands of men trained to regard the Roman 
law as their only model, and when the Roman-law maxim, 
Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem was adopted by 
the newly formed nations, and became a native maxim, 
as in the French, Si veut le roi, si veut la loi, then the 
control of the people over the law had ceased, and all 
law-making power had been centred in the sovereign. 
In England this revolution never took place. The com- 
mon law has continued to develop in the same natural 
way, though by a somewhat different process, through 
every generation of its history, and, however seriously 
at any point the native principles may have been modi- 
fied by the introduction of foreign ideas and doctrines of 
law. such modification has never been of a character to 
check for a moment the natural growth of the common 
law, or to deprive it of its independence of the executive 
and legislative branches of government, which are the 

1 The Roman law did not everywhere take the place of the customary 
law as the sole law of the community. In many places the customary law 
remained as the prevailing local law. But it ceased to grow. The prin- 
ciple was generally admitted that in new cases for which the customary 
law did not provide, recourse should be had to the Roman law, and the 
customary law itself was reduced to written and more scientific shape under 
the influence of the lawyers. Xor should it be understood that the Ger- 
manic law made no permanent contributions to the details of the law in 
those places where it was on the whole supplanted by the Roman law. A 
specific history of law would show that these contributions were numerous 
and important even in directions where the Roman law was very highly 
developed. 



IOO MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

vitally important points. 1 It is at this moment, in every 
quarter of the Anglo-Saxon world, and in the midst of a 
thousand new conditions of social and geographical en- 
vironment, as vigorous and creative a part of the nation's 
life as ever in the past, and one of the most important 
processes of our free self-government. 2 In the United 
States the existence of a written constitution, as funda- 
mental law, setting bounds to the action of the national 
legislature, has led to a most important and valuable 
extension of this principle in the power which the courts 
have assumed, without expressed sanction, to declare a 
law regularly passed by the national legislature uncon- 
stitutional and therefore null and void. This practice 
will also be adopted in some form, almost of necessity, 
by British courts in dealing with acts passed by an Irish 
Parliament if one should be established by an imperial 
statute limiting its legislative powers. 

These three institutions, though by no means covering 
every detail which might be mentioned, are the most 
important political elements brought into modern civi- 

1 That the common law has been radically revolutionized by statute on 
some subjects in very recent times, as, for example, in real-estate law, is 
not an evidence of the decline of this self-developing power. It is rather 
due to the rapid and revolutionary change in society itself, which demands 
equally rapid and revolutionary change in the law to accompany it. The 
statutes themselves are subjected at once to the ordinary process of com- 
mon-law development in the interpretation and application of them made 
by the courts. 

2 It is the habit of German students of law to say hard things of the 
English common law. They call it confused and unscientific and full of 
repetitions and contradictory. And it must be acknowledged that these 
things are to some extent true. But there is no doubt that precisely the 
same things could have been said with equal justice of the Roman law dur- 
ing the ages of its growth, and it is well to remember that, as the Roman 
law took on a more scientific form, and was reduced to an organized system, 
its life and power of growth ceased. History does not show any necessary 
connection between these two events; but certainly, if the formation of a 
scientific system on the basis of the English common law is to mean that our 
law and institution-making power is past, then every Anglo-Saxon may 
most heartily pray that our law may long remain unscientific. 



WHAT THE GERMANS ADDED 10 1 

lization by the German race. The great system of free 
self-government which the Anglo-Saxons have built upon 
this foundation is making the conquest of the world. 
After much experimenting in other directions under the 
lead of the French, all the modern nations which have 
adopted constitutional government are returning to the 
Anglo-Saxon model as expressed either in England or in 
the United States, making such modifications of type as 
local necessities, or local prejudices not yet overcome, 
may require. That the political future of the world 
belongs to Anglo-Saxon institutions seems assured. 1 

One other specific institution of the early Germans 
deserves a passing notice in this chapter because of its 
later influence. That is the comitatus — the band of young 
warriors who were bound by an especially strong bond of 
fidelity to the service of a chief, were maintained by him, 
and followed him to war. It was formerly supposed that 
this institution gave rise to the feudal system. The Ger- 
man chief, it was thought, taking the lands which fell to 
him in the conquest, divided them among the members of 
his comitatus, and, because they remained under the same 
bond of fidelity to him, as their lord, after they had re- 
ceived their land, the feudal system was created at once. 
But great institutions like feudalism are never struck out 
at a single blow, and this theory of its origin was long ago 
abandoned by continental scholars though living on in En- 
glish books. We shall find, later on, an important influ- 

1 That one not infrequently hears among the Germans to-day most vig- 
orous denial of their great indebtedness to Anglo-Saxon institutions is one 
characteristic of the temporary phase of growth through which Germany 
is just now passing, and which affords a most interesting study to the stu- 
dent of comparative politics. It is a symptom of the same sort as the sneer 
at parliamentary government which may occasionally be heard from Ger- 
man university platforms, one among several traits, so keenly noted by 
Lieber in the France of the Second Empire, in his Civil Liberty and Self- 
Government, which may now be found with equal clearness in Germany. 



102 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

ence which the comitalus exercised upon feudalism in some 
points of detail, but it is not one of the sources from 
which the larger institutional features of the feudal sys- 
tem arose. 

Much has also been written upon the influence of cer- 
tain special ideas held by the early Germans, such as their 
theological and ethical ideas and their high regard for 
woman, much more indeed than the facts will warrant. 

That they had a high respect for woman as compared 
with that of the classical world of their time is undoubted, 
but it does not seem to have been higher than that of 
Aryan races in general — the classical nations themselves 
— when in the same stage of civilization, and in general 
it is sufficient to refer to what has been said on the sub- 
ject in the chapter on the influence of Christianity. 

Of the influence of their ethical notions and of their 
somewhat lofty conception of God, the most that can be 
affirmed with any certainty is, that they had ideas which 
would make the Christian teachings seem not altogether 
foreign to them, and which very possibly made easy the 
transition to Christianity. Even such a statement as this 
is, however, an inference from the apparent nature of the 
case, rather than from the recorded facts, and that these 
ideas led them to any more perfect understanding of 
Christianity, or to any more sympathetic development 
of it, than would have been the case without them, is a 
theory without historical support. 

• The coming in of the Germans brought face to face 
the four chief elements of our civilization: the Greek 
with its art and science, much of it for the time forgotten ; 
the Roman with its political institutions and legal ideas, 
and furnishing the empire as the common ground upon 
which all stood; the Christian with its religious and moral 
ideas; and the German with other political and legal 
ideas, and with a reinforcement of fresh blood and life. 



WHAT THE GERMANS ADDED I03 

By the end of the sixth century these all existed side by 
side in the nominal Roman Empire. It was the work of 
the remaining centuries of the middle ages to unite them 
into a single organic whole — the groundwork of modern 
civilization. 

But the introduction of the last element, the Germans, 
was a conquest — a conquest rendered possible by the in- 
ability of the old civilization any longer to defend itself 
against their attack. It is one of the miracles of his- 
tory that such a conquest should have occurred, the 
violent occupation of the empire by the invasion of an 
inferior race, with so little destruction of civilization, 
with so complete an absorption, in the end, of the con- 
queror by the conquered. That there was loss of civili- 
zation is not denied. The general average was greatly 
lowered. The centuries that follow were in some ways 
the "dark ages." But the strange thing is that, consid- 
ering what happened, the darkness was not deeper and 
that the recovery was so complete. It must be pos- 
sible to point out some reasons why the conquest of the 
ancient world by the Germans was so little what might 
be expected. 

In a single word, the reason is to be found in the im- 
pression which the world they had conquered made upon 
the Germans. They conquered it, and they treated it as 
a conquered world. They destroyed and plundered what 
they pleased, and it was not a little. They took posses- 
sion of the land and they set up their own tribal govern- 
ments in place of the Roman. And yet they recognized, 
in a way, even the worst of them, their inferiority to the 
people they had overcome. They found upon every side 
of them evidences of a command over nature such as 
they had never acquired: cities, buildings, roads, bridges, 
and ships; wealth and art, skill in mechanics and skill in 
government, the like of which they had never known; 
ideas firmly held that the Roman system of things was 



104 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

divinely ordained and eternal; a church strongly organ- 
ized and with an imposing ceremonial, officered by vener- 
able and saintly men, and speaking with an overpower- 
ing positiveness and an awful authority that did not yield 
before the strongest barbarian king. The impression 
which these things made upon the mind of the German 
must have been profound. In no other way can the 
result be accounted for. Their conquest was a physical 
conquest, and as a physical conquest it was complete, 
but it scarcely went farther. In government and law 
there was little change for the Roman; in religion and 
language, none at all. Other things, schools and com- 
mercial arrangements for instance, the Germans would 
have been glad to maintain at the Roman level if they 
had known how. Half unconsciously they adopted the 
belief in the divinely founded and eternal empire, and in 
a vague way recognized its continuance after they had 
overthrown it. As time went on, and they identified 
themselves more closely still with the people, ideas, and 
institutions of the old civilization, their belief in the per- 
manence of the empire became more clear, and furnished 
the foundation for the Roman Empire of Charlemagne, 
and for the Holy Roman Empire to which that led, a 
strong influence for unity in the most chaotic portion of 
medieval history. 

If from one point of view, it seems strange that so 
much that was Roman remained, looked at from the side 
of the superiority of the ancient civilization and the evi- 
dent impression which it made upon the Germans, it 
seems strange, in turn, that so much that was German 
survived. It is one of the most fundamental facts of 
the history of civilization that this was a union upon 
fairly equal terms of German and Roman to form a new 
whole and to begin a new progress. 

Having now brought together all the chief elements of 
medieval history, we have next to take up the first great 



WHAT THE GERMANS ADDED I05 

movement which properly belongs to that history itself 
in so far as the introduction of the Germans is not to be 
so described — the transformation of the primitive Chris- 
tian organization into a monarchical church. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY 

The centuries whose outline we have been studying 
were dark and despairing centuries for the patriotic 
Roman. It seemed as if the world was falling to ruin 
around him. Calamity followed calamity in quick suc- 
cession. Pestilence, famine, earthquake, rebellion, and 
invasion trod one upon the heels of the other without 
cessation. The world was coming to an end. He could 
not see as we can now see that the foundations were 
being laid for new states greater than his own, and that 
the life-giving elements of a new and higher civilization 
were being added to the old. He could see only what 
was manifestly true, that the greatest political power of 
history was passing away. 

But not all the ancient society shared this feeling of 
despair. A considerable body of Roman citizens looked 
to the future with hope, and had no fear that all that 
men had gained would be lost, and they, as well as the 
Germans, were laying new foundations, broad and strong, 
for the future to build upon. We have examined the 
early history of the Christian church, its slight beginning, 
its conflict with paganism, and its final victory, and the 
new ideas which it introduced. But the history of the 
early church as a religion is only a small part of its his- 
tory. Upon the foundation offered by the simple and 
scarcely organized society of the pentecostal days was 
gradually constructed, by the operation of causes far dif- 
ferent from any contained in the four gospels, the most 

106 



THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY 107 

permanent and most powerful organization of history — 
the Roman church. During all the dark days of the 
German settlement and of the confused political condi- 
tions which followed, it was the most effective preserva- 
tive and assimilative force at work, and while all the 
other great creations of the middle ages — the Holy 
Roman Empire and the feudal system — have passed away 
leaving only shadowy remains behind them, it has con- 
tinued down into our own times, a world-embracing 
power of great and living influence, notwithstanding the 
loss of much to which it once laid claim. It is then a 
matter of the utmost importance in the history of civili- 
zation to trace the steps by which the primitive church, 
as the New Testament describes it, was transformed into 
this vast and highly perfected "work of human policy," 
as Macaulay justly called it. 

Into the question of the origin of the episcopate, be- 
longing to the history of the primitive church, I shall 
not go. Suffice it to say that, however simply and 
loosely organized the primitive church may have been, 
by the time of the conversion of Constantine the prin- 
cipal causes were already at work which transformed it 
into a hierarchical organization, and their results were 
already plainly manifest in the growing separation of 
clergy from laity as a different body with distinct rights 
and privileges, and divided within itself into various 
grades of rank and power. It will be the work of this 
chapter to trace the further operation of these and other 
causes which transformed this organization of the early 
fourth century, more aristocratic than monarchical in 
character at that point, into the theocratic absolutism of 
later times. The process was not complete in the period 
which falls within the chapter, but it was so fully under 
way that only some revolutionary change of direction in 
the currents of history could have prevented its accom- 
plishment. 



108 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

As, according to the most probable view, one of the 
clergy of a city had been able to create a power over the 
others, and give rise to the office of bishop, in its later 
meaning, so it was natural that the next step in logical 
order should be taken, and the bishop of the most im- 
portant or capital city of a province should extend his 
power over the other bishops of the province and create 
the office of archbishop. One more step, equally logical, 
remained to be taken when the bishop of the greatest 
city of a large region — Alexandria or Antioch — or of the 
capital city of the empire, should create a power over 
archbishops and bishops alike, and found an ecclesiastical 
monarchy. 

This indicates, however, only a general tendency. It 
tells us nothing of the causes which enabled the forming 
constitution actually to take the direction which this ten- 
dency indicated. Had not the circumstances of the time 
favored growth along this line, these beginnings, however 
promising and apparently natural, could have led to no 
result. It is, then, to the favoring circumstances, all 
seeming to conspire together to cherish this natural ten- 
dency, to the conditions in which this growing church 
constitution was placed, that we must turn to ascertain 
the real causes of the monarchical government which 
resulted. 

In beginning a study of these causes it is necessary, 
before all else, to fix clearly in mind the fact that the 
Christian religion was not one of them. There is no one 
form of government or organization to which, as a relig- 
ion, it directly leads. 

It is, indeed, a thing most vitally important, here and 
throughout the whole course of history, that the church 
should be distinguished from Christianity, Connected 
with the history of this religion there are three totally 
distinct things, each finding its beginning, its opportu- 



THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY 1 09 

nity to grow, in the earliest Christianity, but each produced 
by a totally different set of causes and having an almost 
wholly independent life, a life at any rate in no way 
necessarily controlled by either of the others. 

One of these is Christianity considered as a religion 
simply; that personal faith in, and love for, a divine 
Saviour and a divine Father by him revealed which brings 
the individual into conscious unity with God, and be- 
comes for him an unequalled help in right living; that 
personal faith which exists apparently with equal per- 
fection and equally complete results under every ecclesi- 
astical system and in connection with every form of dog- 
matic belief. That such a power exists and that such 
results follow from these causes is manifest from an over- 
whelming abundance of evidence to any student of his- 
torical details, whatever bitter hatred or murderous cruelty 
may have grown out of theological differences, or what- 
ever lying trickery out of ecclesiastical strife. 

The second of these is the church as an organization, 
an ecclesiastical system, a governmental or political in- 
stitution. Based upon a body of people who profess the 
Christian religion, it is nevertheless an outgrowth of their 
political, legal, organizing instincts, and not of anything 
whatever connected with the religion as a religion. It 
would seem as if this must be entirely clear to any one 
who remembers how perfectly the same religious life has 
shown itself, the same religious results have been achieved, 
under the most widely varying forms of organization pos- 
sible to thought. Xavier and Wesley and Woolman, 
whatever faults of character or of temperament remained 
unsubdued, are all alike instances of the transforming 
and inspiring power of the same single force. 

The third is the dogmatic system, the body of theo- 
logical beliefs of a given age or people. Based again on 
the primary facts of the Christian religion, it is not created 
or rendered necessary in the least by anything connected 



110 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

with that religion as religion merely, but is an outgrowth 
wholly of the scientific instinct, of the natural and inevi- 

J table attempt of the mind to explain these primary facts, 
and to construct the explanations made into a reasonable 
and logical system. These explanatory theories differ 
very widely from one another, as it is necessary that they 
should, since they are formed under varying philosophical 
preconceptions, and the varying conditions of different 
ages and different races, but these differences of scientific 
system do not in the slightest degree imply any difference 
in the primary facts and experiences whose explanation 
is attempted. It is an incontestable fact that many a 
bloody civil war has been fought between Christian sects 
who did not differ from one another upon any essential 
religious truth whatever. In the weakness of their not 
yet wholly civilized or Christianized human nature their 
varying explanations seemed to them as vitally important 
as the fundamental fact itself which they were attempt- 
ing to explain, and so they burned and tortured to save 
men's souls. 

These dogmatic systems and these ecclesiastical sys- 
tems both grow out of necessities of human nature. The 
mind must seek some philosophical explanation for fa- 
miliar facts, and a group of people influenced by the same 
desires and motives must take upon themselves that form 
of organization which seems to them the most natural. 

"^ut neither the dogmatic system, nor the ecclesiastical 
system, of any given time or place, is Christianity. The 
causes which have created the one are not those which 
have created the other, and the one set of causes must 
not be held responsible for results which have followed 
from the other. So completely indispensable is this dis- 
tinction that absolutely no trustworthy reasoning about 
Christian history is possible if it is lost sight of ^ causes 
and effects become inextricably confused, and wholly un- 
necessary blundering and bitter controversy have often 
been the result. 



THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY III 

These truths may be said to be commonplaces of the 
best religious thinking of to-day, but they have been so 
constantly disregarded in historical study and writing 
that they ought to be emphasized even at the expense 
of repetition. 

Of the direct causes which did further the tendency 
already begun in the church towards a monarchical con- 
stitution, the most potent and effective may be brought 
under two heads — the change which took place in the 
popular understanding of Christianity itself, and the 
influence of Rome. 

For the first two centuries Christianity had continued 
to be, comparatively speaking, the simple and spiritual 
religion of its primitive days. Two very serious attempts 
had been made to change its character, but without suc- 
cess. One of these had been an attempt to unite the old 
Jewish system with it, and if not to compel the Gentile 
Christian to become almost a Jew, at least to compel 
Christianity to adopt some of the characteristic forms 
and ideas of Judaism. We can discern evidences of this 
struggle between the new and the old in the New Testa- 
ment. The other was an attempt to engraft upon Chris- 
tianity certain speculations of oriental philosophy con- 
cerning the nature of the supernatural and the order of 
the universe. This gave rise to the heresy known as 
Gnosticism and to a long and severe contest, ending, as 
the earlier strife had done, in the preservation in all 
essential points of the primitive Christianity. 

In the meantime there was developing, from the very 
slight beginnings of the early days, a theological system 
and a ritual. In both these directions these first two 
attempts to change the character of Christianity had 
great influence. Every heresy which was strong enough 
to offer battle had a decided effect upon the growth of 
theology by compelling greater definiteness of belief and 
clearness of statement. 



112 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

Much the most powerful force, however, in transform- 
ing the slender theological stock of the primitive docu- 
ments into a vast and complex dogmatic system was the 
Greek philosophy. The speculative instinct of the Greek 
would not allow him to rest in the few simple facts which 
Christianity taught. The questions which those facts 
raise in every thinking mind, he must attempt to solve, 
and in doing so it is his philosophizing genius and his 
already formed philosophy which he calls to his aid. By 
the time of the conversion of Constantine this theological 
system had assumed large proportions, and some of its 
most recondite problems were already under discussion. 

But notwithstanding all these attacks upon it, and 
additions to it from outside sources, the Christian relig- 
ion had remained until towards the middle of the third 
century essentially unchanged. Men came into it be- 
cause it answered their religious needs, and at some cost 
to themselves of difficulty and danger, and its power over 
them was that of a spiritual faith. 

But when the Christian church began to grow rapidly, 
and its social standing to improve, and when priests and 
bishops began to hold positions of influence and power 
and to manage considerable financial interests, then men 
began to come into it from other motives than convic- 
tion — because it was fashionable, or because its offices 
were attractive to the ambitious. When Christianity be- 
came the religion of the court and of the state this ten- 
dency was greatly increased. Masses of men passed in 
name over into Christianity with no understanding of 
what it was, bringing with them the crude religious con- 
ceptions and practices of paganism, unable to understand 
the spiritual truths of Christianity and with no share in 
the inner spiritual life of the Christian. 

The result could easily be predicted. No system — re- 
ligious, political, or philosophical — could survive the in- 
vasion of so much alien material not in harmony with 



THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY 113 

its fundamental teachings without serious loss. It was 
unavoidable that Christianity should decline towards the 
pagan level. It is not easy under any circumstances to 
keep alive a keen perception of higher spiritual truths in 
the mass of mankind. In such circumstances as these 
it was entirely impossible, and though perhaps never lost 
sight of by the better spirits, these truths gradually 
passed out of the popular religious consciousness, and 
their place was taken by something easier to understand, 
and answering to a lower religious need. 

The clearest illustration, probably, of this paganizing, 
process is the introduction of the worship of saints. The 
pagan, trained in polytheistic notions, having a separate 
divinity for every interest of life, found the Christian 
monotheistic idea hard to understand. The one only 
God seemed to him far off and cold, hard to reach with 
the prayers of a mere man. He felt the necessity of put- 
ting in between himself and God the nearer and more 
human subordinate divinities who had been made famil- 
iar to him by his earlier religion, and who seemed to him 
easier of access. And so he created a Christian polythe- 
ism, partly by putting some holy man of the past in the 
place of the pagan divinity, assigning to him the special 
guardianship of the same interest or locality, sometimes, 
as we can now see, actually translating the pagan divin- 
ity himself into a Christian saint. 

This process was no doubt aided by the general bar- 
barization of the Roman society which was going on at 
the same time, and which shows itself in language and 
art and military tactics, and in almost every direction; 
but it affected Christianity chiefly through the mass of 
really unchristianized material which entered the church. 
The resulting product had undoubtedly an immensely 
elevating and purifying effect on the paganism of the 
empire. The truths taught through it, and held in mind 
by means of it, were higher and better than anything in 



114 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the old system. It furnished, very possibly, the only 
practicable road by which the mass of the people could 
pass to an understanding of the more perfect ideas which 
they needed to learn, and the Catholic church has not 
been without a plausible defence for very similar prac- 
tices, adopted more consciously and at a later date, in 
the conversion of pagan nations. But notwithstanding 
all this, it denoted a very decided change to a lower level 
in the popular understanding of Christianity. 

While, however, the introduction of the worship of 
saints is a striking illustration of this paganization of 
Christianity, another result of it was much more impor- 
tant in the development of the constitution of the church, 
that result which is called the "externalizing" of Chris- 
tianity — its transformation from a religion of the spirit 
into a religion of externals. 

In the place of the inner spiritual life, as the deter- 
mining characteristic of the Christian, were placed, more 
and more as the spiritual side was lost sight of, forms 
and intellectual beliefs and membership in a visible 
church. If one accepted the theology of the church, and 
conformed to its regulations, and was in regular standing 
in some orthodox local church, he was a Christian. If 
he refused to accept some point of the theology and was 
cast out of the church, or if for any reason he was not to 
be found within its recognized visible membership, then 
he was not a Christian, no matter what profession he 
might make. 1 Such tests as these were much easier to 
understand and to apply than the older spiritual concep- 
tions. 

1 "Do they who are met together outside the church of Christ think that 
Christ is with them when they have met? Even if such persons may have 
been put to death in confession of the Name, this stain is not washed away 
by their blood. ... It is not possible for one to be a martyr who is not 
in the church. . . . They cannot abide with God who are unwilling to be 
in concord with the church." — St. Cyprian of Carthage, De Cath. Ecd. 
Unitate, chaps. 13 and 14. 



THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY 115 

It may be difficult to see, as some have suggested, how 
Christianity could have been preserved at all, during the 
ages which were to follow, without this compact organi- 
zation, and without this great body of theology, esteemed 
so vitally important as to be maintained at all hazards, 
and, because it was purely intellectual, far more easily re- 
tained in times of general decline than the deeper spir- 
itual truths of religion. But the whole effect was to 
transform Christianity in the world into a definite, visible 
body, sharply defined from non-Christians and from her-, 
etics, distinguished everywhere by the same external, 
easily recognized signs and marks, its members readily 
counted and measured. 

When the idea of such a distinct unity came to prevail, 
and when it had begun to express itself in the use of com- 
mon ceremonies and a common creed, made with great 
care to conform to the recognized standards, it was per- 
fectly natural, inevitable indeed, that a further step 
should be taken, that the mere fact of the formation to 
such an extent of a universal community, should become 
itself a most powerful force in creating a community of 
law and administration; in forming, in other words, a 
common ecclesiastical government which should corre- 
spond to and guard and regulate the community of cere- 
monies and doctrines already formed. The constant ap- 
peal to an ideal unity tended strongly to create a real one. 

The second of the two great causes which led to the 
formation of the monarchical church was Rome — the 
group of influences and ideas which grew out of the his- 
tory and position of Rome and the Roman Empire. So 
decisive and controlling are these ideas and influences, 
when taken together, that we may say that without them 
the monarchical church would never have existed. 

In the first place, Rome was the capital of the political 
world. What could be more natural than that it should 
be looked upon also as the religious capital of the world. 



Il6 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

The fact that he was the bishop of the actual capital city 
was perhaps the most important cause which established 
the power of the patriarch of Constantinople over the 
East. But even after the establishment of Constanti- 
nople Rome continued to be looked upon as in some 
especial sense the central city and capital of the world, 
and the feeling which had helped the bishop of Constan- 
tinople was a much greater aid to the bishop of Rome, 
though he may himself have declined to admit the fact. 

In the second place, the Roman imperialism was the 
only constitutional model which the early church had 
before it. As it began to grow into a common organiza- 
tion of widely separated provinces, it could hardly do 
otherwise than to take the shape of the only government 
of that sort which the world had known, and to copy 
not merely names, like diocese, but also offices and meth- 
ods. It is an interesting fact, however, that this copying 
was by no means slavish, but along with it a free political 
genius was also at work, inventing new institutions for 
new needs, as is seen, at least in its more characteristic 
features, in the important evolution of the church council. 

Again, in the third place, just as the ancient Greek 
philosophic spirit awoke to a new life and power in de- 
veloping the theological system of the early church, so 
also the old Roman genius for political organization and 
rule found a new field for its activity, and a new empire 
to found in the creation of the papacy. There was no 
longer any opportunity for it in the political sphere. Its 
work was finished there, but in the history of the West- 
ern church there was a succession of great spirits, men of 
imperial ideas and genius, which recalls the line of states- 
men of earlier Roman days, and accomplished a similar 
work. Julius, Innocent, Leo, and Gregory, each the first 
of his name, bishops of Rome, and Ambrose, bishop of 
Milan, are examples, only, of the men who, whether the 
opportunity which was offered them to advance the power 



THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY 117 

of their office and to create definite constitutional prece- 
dents was large or small, saw in it its fullest possibilities 
and used it for the utmost gain. It was in the minds 
of these men, and in the atmosphere of Rome, where every 
influence was of empire and all the traditions imperial, 
that the idea first took shape that the one great church 
should find its head, its divinely ordained primate, in the 
bishop of Rome; vaguely at first, no doubt, and with 
slowly growing consciousness, but definitely enough to 
form a consistent working model, through all the vary- 
ing circumstances of their different reigns. 

Under this head also should be included the legal ten- 
dency of the Roman mind. To this more than to any- 
thing else is due the creation of a great body of theology 
suited in character to the Western mind — a system not 
so finely speculative as the Eastern, but practical and 
legal and clearly systematic. This gave to the West, as a 
defining and organizing core, a body of doctrines of its 
own, independent of the Eastern, and tended to give it, 
also, a secure position as a separate church organization. 
The genius, indeed, of its great constructive theologian, 
St. Augustine, one of the greatest names in the intellec- 
tual history of the world, surpasses even the genius of its 
great constructive pontiffs. It was his work to give to 
the Western church, just beginning to take on its sepa- 
rate existence, the crystallizing body of thought which it 
needed to put into definite and scientific statement the 
things for which it stood and which gave it distinctive 
existence. The church did not remain true to all the 
teachings of St. Augustine, but the influence of his theol- 
ogy in the formative age of the Roman church may easily 
be inferred from the strong constructive influence which 
it exerted in a later and more familiar age when ecclesi- 
astical organizations were again taking shape — in the age 
of the Reformation. 

Again, the idea of the divinely founded and eternal 



Il8 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

empire of Rome was a most potent influence. In the 
pagan mind this idea had been formed under the influ- 
ence of the widely extended conquests of Rome, doubt- 
less as a vague reaching after a reasonable explanation 
of such wonderful successes and such an unparalleled 
power. This idea the Christians also had taken up and 
transformed into a still wider conception, adding to it 
that idea which they held so strongly of the growing 
kingdom of Christ which was to fill the whole world. 
In doing so, they made it the foundation of what has 
been called justly, at least so far as definiteness of con- 
ception goes, the first philosophy of history. 1 Rome was 
for the Christian, as for the pagan, a divinely founded 
empire and destined to be eternal. The one God, how- 
ever, took the place of the pagan divinities as the divine 
architect, and his final purpose was to be found, the 
Christian believed, not in a great political empire but in the 
one great spiritual and religious unity of the world which 
that political empire had rendered possible. Rome pre- 
pared the way for and prefigured the kingdom of Christ. 
The influence of this conception upon the idea of the 
Christian church, as forming a world-embracing unity 
organized into one united government, can hardly be 
overstated. The fact that we may now be able to put 
the thought into more definite language than even St. 
Augustine in any single passage, is no evidence that its 
influence was not profound, and there can be no doubt 
but that this "idea of Rome" was one of the most power- 
ful forces in creating that conception of a necessary 

1 St. Augustine's idea of the two cities, the two opposed commonwealths 
continuing through history, the city of God or of righteousness, and the 
city of Satan or of wickedness, is a clearly conceived philosophy of history, 
and one which still retains its hold, even literally, in the form in which he 
stated it, over many minds. It needs, indeed, but very little modification 
of terms and definitions, but little variation in description of the eternal 
conflict between good and evil, to be accepted, as a fairly correct descrip- 
tion of what history is, by one who holds any of the modern theories. 



THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY 119 

church unity in belief and organization which is one of 
the corner-stones, the one essential foundation, indeed, of 
the Roman Catholic monarchy. 

There ought to be mentioned, perhaps, in close con- 
nection with this idea of the divine purpose in history, 
though it cannot be clearly proved to be an outgrowth 
of it, the belief which grew up in the church, of the posi- 
tion assigned to the Apostle Peter. The more or less 
conscious belief in a necessary church unity must cer- 
tainly have been wide-spread before any such idea could 
have been formed regarding him, but when it had once 
taken shape it became a most efficient influence in creat- 
ing an actual unity and making Rome its centre. It is 
hard, in the absence of decisive historical evidence, to 
avoid the conclusion that the belief that Rome was des- 
tined by Providence to be the religious capital of the 
world, was the sole basis of the tradition that Peter was 
bishop of Rome. 1 The two lines of belief certainly ran 
together as may be indicated in this way: A literal inter- 
pretation of certain passages in the New Testament ap- 
pears to indicate that Christ gave to Peter authority over 
the other apostles; therefore Peter's church would have 
authority over other churches. But the divine plan of 
history makes Rome the political capital of all the world; 
therefore it was the divine purpose, since the political 
exists for the sake of the religious, that Rome should 
be the world's religious capital. So Peter, the prince of 
the apostles, founds his church in Rome, the capital city, 
and by Christ's direct authority and by the evident di- 
vine plan of history the Roman church is supreme over 
all other churches. 

This argument was undoubtedly first developed in a 
purely theoretical form against heretics and separatists, 
as in the treatise of Cyprian of Carthage already quoted. 

1 See, however, the strong argument in favor of the tradition in Ramsay's 
The Church in the Roman Empire before A. D. 170. London, 1893. 



120 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

Christ gave to Peter an ideal supremacy over the other 
apostles as a symbol of the great truth which he taught 
in so many forms that the spiritual kingdom which he 
founded should remain one and indivisible. But it was 
impossible that the idea once formed should remain 
merely theoretical. As the monarchical constitution 
began to take shape, it must itself become an actual 
ground of belief that such a constitution was divinely 
ordained, and, with the change in the general conception 
of Christianity which has been noticed from the spiritual 
to the external, the appeal to the actual and visible or- 
ganization as an evidence of the divine intention would 
be an exceedingly strong argument. 

In many directions the special situation of the Roman 
church and its peculiar characteristics were of very great 
value in extending its influence, and finally in establish- 
ing its supremacy. 

It was situated in the only great city of the West. 
There were in the West no cities like Alexandria and An- 
tioch in the East, natural capitals of great geographical 
divisions of the empire, whose bishops would be tempted 
to cherish plans of independence and extended rule. 
Carthage was early shut out from any such possible ri- 
valry by the Arian Vandal conquest of Africa, which 
forced the African church into closer dependence upon 
Rome. The actual struggle of Milan and Aries for in- 
dependence shows how great the danger from this source 
might have been had stronger cities existed. 

The Roman church was the only apostolic church in 
the West. It was an apostolic church, even if not Peter's, 
for Paul had labored there and had written it a very im- 
portant epistle. As doubts and divisions began to arise 
in the church on various theological points, such churches 
were thought to preserve a more pure tradition of the 
primitive teaching than others, and questions of diffi- 
culty began to be referred to them for advice and explana- 



THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY 121 

tion, and their doctrine began to be looked upon as a 
standard. Rome was the only church in the West to 
which such reference could be made. 1 

The Roman was the largest and strongest church in 
the West. It was also much the richest church and it 
had been very generous in its gifts to poorer and weaker 
churches, which looked to it for help. 

It was also with remarkable uniformity an orthodox 
church. In the days of the forming theology and of the 
forming primacy there was great danger that the Roman 
church or the Roman bishop might, now and then, adopt 
a doctrine which the opinion of the majority would not 
finally sanction, a danger which became practically im- 
possible when the primacy was once established. The 
fact that this actually happened in only one or two un- 
important cases gained for the doctrinal opinion of the 
bishop of Rome a weight of authority which it could not 
otherwise have had. This general doctrinal orthodoxy 
is, perhaps, partly accounted for by the fact that theolog- 
ical differences were much less numerous and less ex- 
treme in the West than in the more subtly philosophical 
East. At any rate, this fact made the recognition of the 
doctrinal authority of the Roman church a relatively sim- 
ple matter. But while the opinions which it represented 
gained the victory over all opposing views, the Roman 
church, nevertheless, was very tolerant of variations of 
belief which it did not consider essential, and it did not 
make the conditions hard for the return of the dissenter 
who had seen the error of his ways. The general toler- 
ance and wisdom of its doctrinal oversight made the 
growth of a uniformity of belief under its headship com- 
paratively easy. 

1 As an early instance, we have Theodosius the Great declaring his will, 
in 380, with special reference to the doctrine of the Trinity, that all people 
subject to his rule "should hold that faith which the divine Peter the Apostle 
delivered to the Romans, and which now the pontiff Damasus, and Peter, 
Bishop of Alexandria, follow. "—Cod. Theod., XVI, 1. 



122 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

The Roman church was a very active missionary church. 
A large number of the churches throughout the whole 
West had been founded as missions from Rome and looked 
to it with a natural sense of dependence for guidance 
and direction as to the mother church. The conversion 
of the Anglo-Saxons to Catholic Christianity by mission- 
aries sent from Rome by Pope Gregory I had results of 
great importance, as we shall see hereafter, for the pres- 
ervation and increase of the papal power in a critical 
period of its history. 

So many things we have been able to notice, tenden- 
cies in the church itself, Roman ideas and traditions of 
empire, characteristics of the Roman church and its bish- 
ops, which shaped from within, as we may say, the ex- 
ternal constitution. But not merely these things, others 
also, of a different sort, worked towards the same result. 
Especially deserving of mention are certain historical 
events, happening beyond the control of the Roman 
bishops, or not directly sought by them, which became, 
however, when they had once occurred, most active in- 
fluences in this development. 

First to be considered is the founding of Constanti- 
nople. The first emperor who professed Christianity re- 
moved the seat of the government to the East, mainly 
in all probability for strategic reasons, and though at a 
later time emperors resided for long periods in the West, 
Rome ceased to be the seat of government even for them. 
The bishop of Rome was left with no more powerful and 
overshadowing presence beside him, to reduce his im- 
portance by the constant comparison. He was not so 
directly under the control of the emperor as he would 
otherwise have been, and his theological views seemed 
at a distance much less important than if he had been 
the bishop of the immediate court. As a result, the bish- 
ops of Rome were able to preserve much more indepen- 
dence of action than were the bishops of Constantinople, 



THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY 1 23 

and to maintain a consistency of theology impossible to 
their rivals, subject to the demands of a court which was 
continually in revolution. 

In another direction the distance of the emperor had 
important consequences. After the Lombard conquest 
of Italy the political control of the Eastern emperor over 
the city of Rome and its neighborhood became hardly 
more than nominal. The exarch of Ravenna was in 
name the representative of the emperor, but he could 
do nothing to help Rome in its struggle to preserve its 
independence of the Lombard, and the conduct of the 
defence, and even the local political administration, 
passed naturally into the hands of the bishop, the most 
important officer in the city. In this way there was grad- 
ually added to the general ecclesiastical power which the 
bishops were acquiring the virtually independent political 
government of a little state. 

This incipient temporal power was greatly extended 
by Gregory I, who commissioned civil and military of- 
ficers, made peace independently of the empire, and 
claimed a position above the exarch. This little terri- 
tory thus acquired was enlarged by the gifts of the Frank- 
ish kings, and grew into the States of the Church, so con- 
trolling an influence in the later policy of the papacy, and 
a stone of offence in all international politics from Greg- 
ory I to the present time. That it was of immense value 
to the popes, as supreme rulers of the world church 
through all the medieval times, that they were not bishops 
of any political realm, save of the shadowy Roman Empire, 
but occupied an independent temporal position, cannot be 
denied; that it has been a decided injury to the Cath- 
olic church in modern times, when all interests, both 
ecclesiastical and political, are viewed from a wholly dif- 
ferent point of view, is almost equally clear. 

Another event, the sack of Rome by Alaric, in 410, 
aided somewhat in the growth of this local power. The 



124 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

aristocratic society of the capital city, closely bound up 
with the Roman past, by tradition and by the nominal 
positions which they still held, had remained obstinately 
pagan. The bishop of Rome, supported by the mass of 
the population, and holding an office of great power, was 
yet not of the highest local consideration so long as the 
senate and the aristocracy remained unchristian. Alaric's 
sack of Rome, which largely spared the Christians, scat- 
tered and ruined this pagan society and left the bishop 
and his clergy without social, as they had been without 
official, rivals. 

Another event of this sort was a decision of the Council 
of Sardica, in the year 343. This council had been called 
to reconcile, if possible, the parties which had grown up 
in the church out of the Arian controversy; but it had 
failed of its object, and the Arian representatives had se- 
ceded to hold a meeting by themselves in Philippopolis. 
The party remaining, we might call it an ex-parte council, 
decreed a limited right of appeal from local decisions to 
Julius, at that time bishop of Rome. The measure was 
adopted as a means of self-defence to protect the ortho- 
dox bishops of the eastern European provinces from the 
Arian majority there, but its influence became in time 
much wider than was originally intended. It came to 
be understood to legalize all sorts of appeals to Rome, 
and especially when, with the decline of historical knowl- 
edge, the decrees of the Council of Sardica became con- 
fused with those of the much more influential Council 
of Nicaea, they seemed to give a sanction of the highest 
authority to the claims of the pope. Many other things 
also favored the growth of appeals to Rome, and a su- 
preme judicial authority in the papacy gradually came to 
be recognized throughout the West, though not without 
some determined resistance. 

In the year 445, Leo I, involved in a desperate conflict 
with the archbishop of Aries, obtained from the Emperor 



THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY 1 25 

Valentinian III an edict declaring in the most explicit 
terms the supremacy of the bishop of Rome over the 
church of the empire in both judicial and administrative 
matters, as a necessary means of peace and unity, and 
commanding the imperial officers to compel the disobedi- 
ent to submit to his authority. This was apparently de- 
cisive in the struggle with Aries, but that it had any 
large or permanent influence in favor of the papacy does 
not seem likely. The empire was now falling rapidly to 
pieces. The imperial power was weak, and only here and 
there really respected. Large parts of the West were 
already in the hands of Arian Germans. Had it not 
been for the fact that the current was already setting 
strongly towards papal supremacy, and all influences 
combining to further it, this edict of Valentinian's would 
probably have had no appreciable effect. As it was, its 
effect could not have been great. 

A more important cause of the advancement of the 
papacy was undoubtedly the dissolution of the Western 
Empire itself. It might seem as if the church would be 
involved in this dissolution, and that when the imperial 
authority disappeared the authority of the pope, which 
had grown up under its shadow, and upon the model 
which the empire had furnished, would fall to ruins with 
it. But the church was now too strong and too indepen- 
dent. The causes which destroyed the empire did not 
affect it, and it easily maintained its real authority when 
that of the empire had become a mere theory. Indeed 
the immediate effect of the destruction of the political 
unity and of the establishment of independent German 
kingdoms was to draw the surviving Roman life in the 
provinces into a more close dependence upon the church 
as the only representative of the old common life. The 
dissolution of the empire left the papacy the immediate 
and natural heir of its position and traditions. 

In the period which followed the German conquest, 



126 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

by far the most decisive influence was the alliance of 
the papacy with the Franks; it was, indeed, one of- the 
most eventful coalitions ever entered into in history. 
It is no abuse of terms to call this an alliance, for though 
doubtless there was no definite treaty, nor even a con- 
scious bargain, it was really a combination which the 
two great powers of the future, fairly equal parties in 
position and promise, formed with one another at the 
outset of their common history, and which they drew 
more and more close as the circumstances of their growth 
made it increasingly useful. It was one of the essential 
influences which preserved the papacy from the great 
danger of being completely absorbed in the overshadow- 
ing Frankish power that there was behind them both 
this history of mutual helpfulness and respect. The de- 
tails of this alliance and its results belong elsewhere. 
It should be held in mind, however, as one of the most 
helpful historical influences in the formative age of the 
papal monarchy. 

This cannot pretend to be a complete statement of the 
causes which led to the supremacy of the Roman church 
and of its bishop over the Western church. No such 
statement has ever yet been made, and very likely none 
is possible. It is complete enough, however, to show 
how all things, influences the most widely separated in 
character and time, religious and political and traditional, 
sentiment and law and theology, deliberate purpose and 
unforeseen events, all combine to lead to this common 
conclusion. 

This is only another way of saying that the necessities 
of the time demanded such a result, and that the mo- 
narchical church had a great work to do which could have 
been done by nothing else so well. It is not difficult now 
to see what this work was. 

Two great dangers threatened the early church. One 



THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY 1 27 

was that it might be absorbed in the state, and come to 
bear the same relation to it that the pagan religion had 
borne, its subservient handmaid, a subordinate depart- 
ment of the government to be controlled and directed 
to political ends. How great this danger was can be seen 
in several periods of the history of the church in the East- 
ern Empire when such a result actually happened. But 
however great this danger may have been under the em- 
pire, it became far greater on the establishment of the 
German kingdoms in the West. Not merely the Arian 
states, but the Catholic Carolingian state, threatened at 
times the absorption of the church in the state and the 
control of it for purposes foreign to its own. It is im- 
possible to see how the church could have escaped this 
danger without the compact and strong interstate organi- 
zation which had been given it, directed by a single head 
and according to a single plan. Such a power, extend- 
ing beyond the limits of a single state, and fairly on a 
level with that of the king, commanded respect for its 
vigorous teaching of the necessary separation of church 
and state and of the independent sphere of church ac- 
tivity. 

The other danger to which the early church was ex- 
posed was that the barbarizing process from which the 
Christian religion did suffer so greatly might complete 
its work, and the spiritual truths of Christianity, so 
faintly held and rarely proclaimed in their simple form, 
might be entirely lost from civilization. This danger 
also, like the other, became extreme with the coming in 
of the Germans. Christianity had obtained such a hold 
upon the Roman world that the classical paganism was 
absorbed, with results which were deplorable certainly, 
even if unavoidable, but which were not absolutely fatal. 
But would not a new deluge of religious barbarism, for- 
eign to classical ideas, and far less cultivated in other 
directions, have failed to gain even a faint conception of 



128 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the higher truth and have destroyed completely all un- 
derstanding of the religious side of the new faith, if this 
had not been embodied and encased in an external shell 
of forms and doctrines and constitution strongly enough 
fixed to resist the attack? The very paganizing itself 
which Christianity had undergone, by bringing it down 
nearer to the level on which the Germans stood, was a 
defence against further paganizing. The German conquest 
did undoubtedly have some further corrupting effect, 
but that it did not have a greater influence and actually 
complete the work of barbarization, as it did complete it 
in science and in language, is due to the profound impres- 
sion which the church, with its real power, its gorgeous 
ceremonial, and its authoritative and infallible teaching 
made upon the Germans. That the church was so well 
organized, its forms and ritual so well settled, and its 
teaching so definite and uniform when the invasions fell 
upon it, was what saved it from destruction and made 
it a great reconstructive force in the new order of things. 
This work of reconstruction, which the church began 
even while the destruction of the old world was still 
going on, must be regarded as a very large part of the 
positive work which the monarchical church had to do. 
It was necessary for the future that something should in- 
corporate the Germans into the ancient civilization, and 
make them its continuators, and though this was to be 
a long and almost hopeless labor, it was absolutely es- 
sential that it should be begun at once. But everything 
was in ruins except the Catholic church. That was or- 
ganized and in active operation. It did not fall or lose 
vitality when the empire fell. The overthrow of the po- 
litical unity only bound the disunited provinces so much 
the more closely to itself. The Germans had nothing to 
put in its place. It therefore remained, as it had been, a 
living force out of the past, continuing the ancient world 
into the medieval. But without this strong and uni- 



THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY 1 29 

versal government the church would not only have run 
great risks of failing to impress itself upon the German 
barbarians, but it could never have created in them that 
respect for its power, and that idea of its indisputable 
authority which not merely kept the conqueror within 
bounds, but carried over into the new states and the new 
conditions so many of the results which antiquity had 
reached. In every separate kingdom, even in the Anglo- 
Saxon, which was held to the ancient world by no other 
bond, the priest of every insignificant hamlet was a mem- 
ber of an independent government which extended far be- 
yond the boundaries of the kingdom, and which awakened 
awe and commanded obedience when it spoke through 
him. He was a check on the destructive passions of the 
barbarian lord of the village, and taught him new vir- 
tues and new ideas. 

Besides the papacy there grew up m the early church 
another institution which demands our attention from 
its wide and long-continued influence — the monastic sys- 
tem. 

Monasticism is undoubtedly of oriental origin, and 
originates in oriental ways of looking at life as itself an 
evil and something from which the holy man must es- 
cape as completely as he can, even if possible from con- 
sciousness itself. 1 When the changing conception of 
Christianity had introduced into the church ideas of sin 
and holiness, and of the evils of life not wholly unlike 
oriental ideas on the same subjects, the ascetic spirit, 
which was undoubtedly present in Christianity to some 
extent from the beginning, received a strong impulse and 
extended even into the West, where the natural tenden- 
cies were not ascetic. If the Christian life is one of ob- 
servances, if freedom from sin is to be obtained by pen- 

1 Something of an idea of the early monasticism and of the original liter- 
ature relating to it may be obtained from Kingsley's Hermits. 



130 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

ance and by fleeing from temptations, then the holiest 
life will be secured by abandoning the world entirely, and 
either alone, in solitude, or in company with a few others 
like-minded, giving one's self wholly up to penances, and 
mortifications of the flesh, and pious offices. The more 
external and formal the religious life became, the stronger 
became the tendency towards the ascetic and monastic 
ideal. 

This was not the only thing, however, which gave mo- 
nasticism its disproportionate influence during the middle 
ages. There comes at times to nearly every man a long- 
ing for a life of quiet contemplation, in which, free from 
all cares and responsibilities and uncongenial duties, he 
may give himself up wholly to spiritual meditation, or 
to his favorite intellectual pursuits, under no compulsion, 
however, or uncomfortable sense of the duty of literary 
production. The history of the English university fel- 
lowships is full of examples of the influence of this feel- 
ing, and one thinks easily of more than one case in mod- 
ern times, outside monasticism, where the opportunities 
of such a life have been used to some good purpose. 
This feeling is especially strong and frequent in student 
days, the time of life when the medieval boy was in the 
hands of the monk, and when in natural consequence 
monasticism received its largest reinforcements. For in 
the middle ages there was no other opportunity for a 
life of this sort. The monastery gave it as perfectly as 
it has ever been given, and the monastery alone. 

In still another way monasticism furnished the only 
possible resort in a perfectly natural and permanent need. 
For the disappointed and despairing, for the broken- 
hearted, especially among women, whose hopes had been 
destroyed or whose interest in life seemed unable to sur- 
vive the loss of friends, the cloister gave a refuge, and 
often a recovery to helpful interests and to gentle chari- 
ties, saving a bit of the world's good force from total 



THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY 131 

loss. The Protestant has not infrequently lamented the 
absence in his system of any natural and ready resort, in 
cases of this kind, and the consequent waste of energy, 
nor have attempts been wanting to supply the lack. 

It must be noticed, also, that not the only motive of a 
religious sort which sustained monasticism was as selfish 
and unchristian as the desire to escape from all duty and 
all contact with the world, and from all knowledge of sin, 
in order to make sure of one's own safety in the world to 
come. The monastic life was very often conceived of as 
a genuine Christian ministry, of wider opportunity than 
the secular priesthood, and entered upon and lived in 
earnest Christian spirit. It must be borne in mind, also, 
that spiritual religion and genuine Christianity were much 
more common in the medieval monasteries than outside 
them, and that, however debased the monastic life may 
have become at any given time or place, there was through- 
out the whole period a constant succession of thorough 
monastic reformations which restored, for a time at least, 
its earlier purity and produced often a profound impres- 
sion on the world outside; which passed on indeed from 
age to age an ideal of Christian living, never lowered and 
never forgotten as an ideal. 

It is certain, however, that an ascetic monasticism has 
its strongest roots in a conception of life and duty which 
is essentially medieval. As modern forces began to make 
themselves felt in the closing centuries of the middle ages, 
not only did its power over society as a whole decline, 
but the system itself underwent no slight modification. 
It is clearly impossible that it should ever hold the place 
or exercise the influence under modern conditions which 
once belonged to it. ' 

In the general work of civilization, in addition to its 
work in the line of religion, the influence of monasticism 
was by no means slight. It was a constant proclamation, 
in the midst of a barbarous and crude and warlike society, 



132 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

of the duty and the glory of another sort of life, of the 
virtues of peace and self-sacrifice and poverty and labor. 
It was a perpetual reminder that some things supremely 
worth having were not to be gained by strife or self-asser- 
tion or pride of place, but that passive virtues and gentle 
lives might be full of power. That monasticism reflected 
often the violent impulses and brutal methods of the 
time, and sank frequently to the general level of super- 
stition around it is not to be denied. It furnished often 
examples of anything but gentle virtues and subdued 
passions. But notwithstanding all that may be said of 
its corruption, it did preserve and hold up to general 
view more perfectly than anything else, or, as it seems 
likely, than anything else could have done in such a time, 
the conception of a nobler life and the immense value of 
things not material. 

The one distinguishing characteristic of Western mo- 
nasticism, in contrast with that which generally prevailed 
in the East, was also of the greatest value to civilization. 
The Western organizing and legal genius seized upon the 
simple idea of solitary life and isolated communities which 
it had received from the East, and constructed great mo- 
nastic orders, covering Europe with a network of soci- 
eties bound together under a common law which minutely 
regulated the daily life. 1 One universal and regular duty 
which this "rule" placed upon the monk was the neces- 
sity of being constantly employed. Especially to be em- 
phasized is the fact that this was work for the sake of 
work. The object sought was not so much what would 
be produced by the labor as to keep the body and mind 
so constantly occupied that temptations could find no ac- 
cess and sin would therefore be escaped. Consequently, 

1 A translation of the Rule of St. Benedict, the chief law of monastic 
conduct until the rise of the mendicant orders in the thirteenth century, 
may be found in Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, translated 
and edited by Ernest F. Henderson (Bohn's Library), pp. 274-314. 



THE FORMATION OF THE PAPACY 



133 



it was a matter of comparative indifference what the work 
was. The harder and more painful and unattractive to 
men in general it might be, so much the better for the 
monk. If sufficiently difficult, the element of penance was 
added, and it became a still more effectual means of grace. 
In this way the monk did a great amount of extremely 
useful work which no one else would have undertaken. 
Especially is this true of the clearing and reclaiming of 
land. A swamp was of no value. It was a source of 
pestilence. But it was just the place for a convent to 
settle because it made life especially hard. And so the 
monks carried in earth and stone, and made a foundation, 
and built their monastery, and then set to work to dike 
and drain and fill up the swamp, till they had turned it 
into most fertile ploughland and the pestilence, ceased. 
In the same way the monk laboriously copied manuscript 
after manuscript which we know he could not understand 
from the errors in copying which he made. But it kept 
him at work and so we have the copy though the original 
may have perished. 

The monk taught the farmer better methods of agri- 
culture, and he preserved something of mechanical skill 
and of the manufacturing arts, and even added some im- 
provements in them of his own. St. Theodulf's plough 
and St. Dunstan's anvil were not inappropriately adored 
as holy relics. The schools were in his hands. He kept 
alive whatever of ancient learning remained, and modern 
science owes to him an incalculable debt for his labors at 
her beginning. In childish scrawls he passed on from 
generation to generation the methods of the fine arts 
until genius finally awoke. It would be impossible to con- 
struct the history of the middle ages but for the monastic 
chronicles and the documents which the monks preserved. 
Their manuals of devotion are still in use in the churches 
of every name. Literature has been enriched by the 
works of their imagination in chivalric legend and the 



134 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

lives of the miracle-working saints, and the Christian 
church will never cease to sing the hymns which they 
composed. In its worst periods monasticism never sank 
below the surrounding level, and on the whole, until 
stronger forces began to work, it was a leader and a 
guide. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 

In the account of the German conquest which was 
given in the fourth chapter the history of one tribe — 
the Franks — was entirely omitted. The results of their 
occupation of Gaul were so important, the empire which 
they founded, their alliance with the church, their legal 
notions and political institutions were all of such decisive 
influence upon the future that their history deserves a 
separate treatment. The ideas and practices of the Visi- 
goths and of the Lombards had important results in the 
national history of the lands where they settled. It 
would be necessary to investigate Visigothic law in order 
to understand the details of Spanish institutional life. 
The Anglo-Saxons will doubtless exert upon the final po-. 
litical history of the world an influence greater than that 
of the Franks, if it be not already greater. But it was 
the Franks alone of all the German tribes who became a 
wide power in the general history of the middle ages. 
It is to them that the political inheritance of the Roman 
Empire passed, to them came the honor of taking up 
and carrying on, roughly, to be sure, and far less exten- 
sively and effectively, but nevertheless of actually carry- 
ing on the political work which Rome had been doing. 
They alone represent that unity which Rome had estab- 
lished, and so far as that unity was maintained at all as 
a definite fact, it is the Franks who maintained it. Its 
influence was undoubtedly wider than theirs, as felt 
through the church for example, and yet, without the 

*3S 



-_ 



136 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

strong reinforcement which the empire of the Franks 
brought to that idea of unity, it would in all probability 
have disappeared as a separate political force before the 
need for it had passed away. 1 

Originally a very loose confederation — it is doubtful 
even if they were so much as a confederation — of small 
tribes or families in the middle and lower Rhine valley, 
some of them in alliance with Rome and on Roman ter- 
ritory, the Franks hardly attracted even a passing notice 
from either statesman or historian during the time when 
the great tribes of the East Germans were in motion. 
It is only at the end of the fifth century that their career 
really begins, and then, as so often in similar cases, it is 
the genius of one man, a great leader, which creates the 

x The great importance of the Frankish state, for the whole political 
and institutional future of the Continent, has made its history an exceed- 
ingly interesting field of study, and since the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
tury it has been the subject of a most minute and careful scientific investi- 
gation by German and French scholars, who have examined every fact 
from almost every conceivable point of view. There has been, on the part 
of the majority of German scholars, an apparently unconscious national 
bias which has led them to exaggerate the German elements in this state, 
perhaps not so much by way of actual exaggeration as by slighting or dis- 
regarding the Roman contributions to the common whole. This tendency 
has called out in France — it would almost seem as a definite protest against 
it — a most remarkable series of books, by M. Fustel de Coulanges, on the 
history of the Franks to the end of the Carolingian period. In these there 
is to be found as marked, and apparently a more conscious and deliberate 
exaggeration in the opposite direction, by minimizing the German and 
emphasizing the Roman influence wherever possible. While very evident 
faults of process make every conclusion reached by M. Fustel subject to 
question, and while a very large body of the more recent scholars of 
France, beginning with M. Monod, have refused to follow his lead upon 
many points, his books are still exceedingly interesting and stimulating, 
and for the non-Continental student they serve to restore the balance, 
somewhat seriously distorted by the extreme Germanizers, and to emphasize 
that most fundamental fact that the new society was formed from a com- 
bination of both German and Roman elements. Upon some points, as 
for example the early history of the feudal system, M. Fustel, while not 
differing upon any important detail from the broader-minded among the 
German investigators, like Georg Waitz, has, however, by virtue of his 
keen constructive insight put the process of growth in clearer light than 
ever before. 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 137 

nation. Rising out of an obscurity which is hardly light- 
ened by the abundant mythology which afterwards col- 
lected about him, head of one of the little family groups 
into which the Franks were divided, a " county king," 
Clovis — Hlodwig, the first Louis the Grand — appears as 
one of the great creative spirits who give a new direction 
to the currents of history. The main traits of his char- 
acter and work stand out clearly enough despite the leg- 
endary embellishments which have naturally been added. 
Like very many others of his kind, utterly without a con- 
science, hesitating at no means for the accomplishment of 
his purpose, he brought about, by a succession of treasons 
and murders, the consolidation of the whole Frankish 
stock under his personal rule. But even before this 
process of consolidation was undertaken, he had begun 
to extend rapidly the territory occupied by the Franks. 
Syagrius, the son of a former Roman governor, had gath- 
ered into his hands the remains of the Roman power 
north of the Loire and ruled a considerable territory 
there which, in the general breaking up of things, had 
fallen to no one else, nominally under the emperor, really 
as a little independent kingdom. This power Clovis over- 
came in the first great battle of his history, A. D. 486, and 
brought under the Frankish dominion. 

With the territory occupied by the Franks, and that 
which was gradually added as a result of this victory, 
Clovis possessed the larger part of northeastern Gaul. 
To the south of him lay the two German kingdoms of 
the Burgundians and the Visigoths. With the power 
which he had gained in the north he turned against them. 
The Burgundians were first attacked, and, though their 
kingdom was not incorporated in that of the Franks 
during Clovis's life, it was made tributary and compelled 
to aid the further extension of his power. A few years 
later the Visigoths were defeated and retired to Spain, 
leaving the lands south of the Loire to Clovis, except a 



138 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

small portion in the southeast which Theodoric, the Os- 
trogothic king in Italy, Clovis's more powerful contem- 
porary, forced him to abandon. 

Clovis had thus made subject to himself nearly the 
whole of Roman Gaul, and that, too, with a body of 
Franks originally very small — perhaps not more than 
three thousand men — and though later reinforced, still 
never very large; certainly the Romanized provincials 
were in a very large majority, especially south of the 
Loire. It might seem inevitable that the Teutonic in- 
stitutions, represented by so small a proportion of the 
population, would be overwhelmed and disappear. It 
was in reality, however, to be the lot of the Franks, un- 
consciously and by the force of circumstances, to do that 
work for the future which Theodoric had, with clearer 
vision, seen to be necessary — the uniting of German and 
Roman into a common whole. But if this was to be 
done, it was vitally necessary that the Teutonic side of 
the new kingdom should be kept strong enough to survive 
the danger of Romanization to which it was exposed. 

This was secured as a result of two very important 
points in which the Frankish conquest differed from that 
made by any other German people. In the first place, 
their conquest was not a migration. Instead of cutting 
themselves off completely from their original homes, and 
settling themselves in the midst of a much more numer- 
ous Roman population, with only scanty and accidental 
reinforcements of new German blood, as did the others, 
they retained permanently their original German land, 
and the parts of northeastern Gaul where the Roman 
population seems to have disappeared or become very 
small. They simply spread themselves out from their 
original lands, retaining these permanently as a constant 
source of fresh German life, a Teutonic makeweight to 
the Roman provinces occupied. 

It was of equal importance, in the second place, that 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 139 

step by step as their conquests spread over Roman lands, 
they extended also, in the opposite direction, into Ger- 
many and brought in peoples who had not been perma- 
nently affected by Roman influence. These German con- 
quests Clovis began by his incorporation of the Alemanni 
and of the eastern Franks, and they were still further ex- 
tended by his successors. The pure, or nearly pure, 
Roman lands of the west were kept in balance, in their 
influence on the new state, by the pure German lands of 
the east. 

These facts were of great importance in more ways 
than one. Not merely was it essential to the formation 
of the civilization of the future, that German and Roman 
elements should both be preserved, and brought together 
in such a way that they should unite on equal terms in a 
new common whole, but also, if a new permanent civili- 
zation was to be constructed on the foundation of the 
Frankish kingdom, it was absolutely necessary that the 
invasions should cease. So long as every new attempt to 
revive order and settled government was liable to be de- 
feated by a new invasion, and chaos likely to be introduced 
again, no steps could be taken towards the future. This 
danger could be removed only by the incorporation of 
Germany — the source of the invasions — in the new com- 
mon life which was forming, and by the creation of a 
political and military power strong enough to be safe from 
outside attack. 

The incorporation of Germany was not finished until 
the days of Charlemagne, but it was, long before that, 
complete enough to secure the Frankish state against 
such an attack as that by which it had itself overthrown 
the kingdoms of the Burgundians and the Alemanni. It 
also very early became strong enough not to fear the 
danger of Roman reaction before which Vandal and Os- 
trogoth had gone down, and on the field of Tours it was 
able to turn back the new Mohammedan invader who 



140 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

had destroyed the Visigothic state. It was this great 
political and military power which the Franks built up 
that gave them the opportunity to do the work which 
every other German tribe failed to accomplish. It was 
because they kept constantly open the sources of Teu- 
tonic life and vigor that they were able to use the oppor- 
tunity to great results. 

A third step of great importance, in this process of 
union, was also taken by Clovis. One institution, pro- 
duced in the ancient world before the Germans entered 
it, had continued with vigorous life and wide influence, 
indeed, with slowly increasing power, through all the 
changes of this chaotic period. It was to be in the future 
a still greater power and to exert an influence even wider 
and more permanent than that of the Franks. It was 
also one of the most important channels through which 
the ancient civilization passed over into the new. This 
was the Roman church. It was to be the great ecclesias- 
tical power of the coming time. It was, therefore, a most 
essential question whether the Franks, who were to grow 
on their side into the great political power of the future, 
should do so in alliance with this other power or in oppo- 
sition to it. 

The other Germans who entered the empire, except the 
Saxons, were Christians, but they had been converted to 
that form of Christianity which is known as Arianism. 
This was a belief like that which is now called Unitarian, 
which had grown up in the East at the beginning of the 
fourth century, and which continued to be a cause of theo- 
logical strife for two or three hundred years. Whatever 
may be one's personal belief upon the theological point, 
the fact which condemns Western Arianism in the sight 
of history, and makes its fate deserved, is that, at a time 
when there was the utmost need that the shattered frag- 
ments of the empire should be held together in some way, 
and when disorganization was most dangerous, it stood 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 141 

for separation and local independence. It furnished no 
strong bond of unity on the religious side, as did the Cath- 
olic faith, to replace that political unity which was fall- 
ing to pieces. Burgundian and Visigoth, Vandal and 
Ostrogoth and Lombard had no common religious organ- 
ization and recognized no primacy in the bishop of Rome. 
They did indeed tolerate the Catholicism of their Roman 
subjects, and did not break off the connection of these 
with the Roman church, but that result would certainly 
have followed had they grown into strong and permanent 
states, still Arian in faith. The continued life of these 
nations would have meant not merely the political, but 
also the religious, disintegration of Europe. The unity 
of the future, in a Christian commonwealth of nations, 
was at stake in the triumph of the Roman church and 
the Frankish Empire. 

This question Clovis settled, not long after the begin- 
ning of his career, by his conversion to Catholic Chris- 
tianity. That he ever became a real Christian seems as 
unlikely as that Constantine did, and the two cases are 
in many ways parallel. That political considerations 
moved him we can only guess, but they seem obvious, 
and there is little doubt but that his further conquests 
in Gaul were aided by the fact that the Franks were of 
the same faith as the Roman provincials, while the Goths 
and Burgundians whom he attacked were Arians. That 
he could have had any conception of the more remote 
consequences of his act is impossible; but, as we have 
seen, these were the most important of its results. That 
the Frankish Empire could have been formed without 
this alliance is probable. It is possible, also, that a 
common church organization could have been created for 
all its parts, but it would have been impossible for such 
a church to have done the work — as important outside 
the Frankish bounds as within — which the Catholic 
church accomplished. 



142 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

In these three ways, therefore, the work of Clovis was 
of creative influence. He brought together the Roman 
and the German upon equal terms, each preserving the 
sources of his strength, to form a new civilization. He 
founded a political power which was to unite nearly all 
the continent in itself, and to bring the period of the 
invasions to an end. He established a close alliance be- 
tween the two great controlling forces of the future, the 
two empires which continued the unity which Rome had 
created, the political empire and the ecclesiastical. 

It may seem from one point of view more strange that 
Roman institutions were preserved at all in this Frank- 
ish kingdom than that they threatened to supersede the 
German. The Frankish occupation of Gaul was a con- 
quest. It seems to have been more distinctly a conquest 
than most of the other German migrations — a definite 
change of government and so presumptively of institu- 
tions. 

It must be remembered, however, that government was 
in an incomplete stage of development among these Ger- 
mans; if well advanced in some directions it was entirely 
wanting in others. In the simpler life and small land of 
their earlier history few difficult problems had presented 
themselves, and these had been met by simple means. 
Now, however, with the necessity of ruling a wide land 
and a large population of diverse race, of settling com- 
plicated legal questions, and of providing a larger rev- 
enue, there was a demand suddenly put upon the Ger- 
man state for an enlargement of its institutional life which 
no rapidity of development could possibly meet. The 
result was natural. Wherever in their earlier public life 
the Germans had developed institutions capable of appli- 
cation to the new conditions, these were continued in the 
new states, and became German elements in the final 
institutional product. An extremely important example 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 1 43 

of this is the system of public courts. Wherever the new 
demand was of a sort which could not be met by any- 
thing which they already possessed, it was the simplest, 
and easiest, indeed the only possible thing to do, to con- 
tinue in operation the Roman machinery which they found 
existing. So the administrative system, taxation, legal 
and extra legal customs in the renting of lands, remained 
Roman. These are but single examples on either side. 
The number might be largely increased, and will be, in 
some cases of detail, as we proceed. 

One peculiar idea of the Germans must also be taken 
account of here, as of influence in preserving Roman 
practices, that idea which is known, somewhat techni- 
cally, as the "personality of the law." The German was 
supposed to preserve of right his native tribal law under 
whatever government he might live. Alemanni, Burgun- 
dians, and Lombards, brought into the Frankish king- 
dom and subject to its king, kept their old law and did 
not come under the Frankish. New laws concerning 
public affairs might be made, and be in force in all the 
subject lands, but in private law, in matters between 
man and man, the old tribal customary law was still 
their law. This principle was applied also to the Romans. 
The Roman law continued to be the law of the Roman 
subjects of these German states, at least for a very con- 
siderable time, and until Roman and German had melted 
into a new people with a new customary law. More than 
one of these German states, indeed, issued manuals or 
summaries of the Roman law for the use of their subjects, 
as they had done of their own German law. 

Under other heads, as in the last chapter and in the 
chapter on feudalism, are to be seen some further preserv- 
ative forces of great value which kept the Roman ele- 
ments in use until they became organic parts of a new 
civilization. Those mentioned here will serve to show 
how it was that, even if the Franks entered as a con- 



144 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

quering nation and consciously put a new government in 
place of the old, large portions of the Roman legal and 
institutional arrangements remained in use. 

The immediate successors of Clovis continued his work. 
At one time, under the early Merovingians, the subject 
territory of the Frankish state almost if not quite touched 
the Adriatic. It was recognized by the other western 
states as the strongest of them all, and had diplomatic 
relations with the Roman Empire in the East on some- 
thing like an equal footing. 

But the royal Merovingian race was passionate and 
brutal. Its history is full of treasons and murders and 
crimes not to be mentioned. As a result its life was 
speedily exhausted, and it sank, physically and morally, 
with fearful rapidity, its princes dying like old men at 
twenty years of age, and its power passing into other 
hands. 

The life of its royal family was, with no very great 
exaggeration, the life of the race. This was also violent 
and savage. Crimes were frequent. The first appeal 
was usually to brute force. Life and property were not 
secure, and the government seemed to have small power 
to enforce order. 1 Civil war raged almost without ceas- 

1 Gregory of Tours, in his History of the Franks, X, 27, gives us an inter- 
esting example of the way in which the Frankish government sometimes 
attempted to repress disorders. After telling how a private feud arose in 
Tournay, and how Queen Fredegonda, having tried in vain to persuade 
the parties to cease their quarrels and make peace, determined at last to 
bring them to order with arms, he says: "She invited, in fact, these three 
men to a great feast, and made them sit together upon one bench; and 
when the feast had continued a long time, and night had come, and the 
tables had been taken away, as the custom of the Franks is, the guests con- 
tinued sitting on the benches where they had been seated. And they drank 
much wine, and became so drunk that their attendants got drunk also, and 
went to sleep in any corner of the house where they happened to be. Then 
men with three axes, as directed by the queen, stationed themselves behind 
these three men, and, while they were talking with one another, . . . they 
were cut down." Such a government might be called anarchy tempered 
with assassination. 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 145 

ing. The subject nations became restless and by degrees 
more and more independent. The empire of the Franks 
seemed to be threatened with dissolution, and the work 
which Clovis had begun, with failure. 

Even in the early days of the Merovingian dynasty a 
line of division through the national life had begun to 
show itself, drawn probably at first by dynastic quarrels 
but running ever deeper as time went on. This was the 
difference between the west — called after a time Neustria 
— set off into a separate kingdom in the Merovingian 
family divisions, and the eastern kingdom — Austrasia. In 
the west the Franks were few and rapidly becoming 
Romanized, and Roman usages prevailed. The east was 
thoroughly Teutonic. 

There is also another difference to be noticed, fully as 
important as the contrast and possible hostility of these 
two incipient nationalities. Besides tending to make the 
king more powerful, as was noticed in Chapter V, the con- 
quest had led also, as a secondary result, to the formation 
of a more powerful aristocracy than had existed before, 
through the possession of land and office — of greater and 
more permanent sources of wealth. This new nobility 
began at once to attack the royal power, and to strive 
for independence. In the western kingdom, as a result 
of the Roman influence — the analogy and the continued 
institutions of a highly centralized government — the royal 
power was strong. In the east, where German ideas were 
prevalent, the strength of the nobility grew more rapidly. 

Out of these two sources of contention grew the con- 
tinual civil strifes of this period. They seem at first 
sight as meaningless for history as the battles of the stone 
age. But taken together with the decay of the Mero- 
vingian house, they gave an opportunity for the family of 
nobles, who were destined to restore the royal power and 
to reconstruct the Frankish kingdom, to rise into a posi- 
tion of controlling influence. 



146 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

This family had its house possessions in Austrasia. 
In that kingdom, in the reign of Dagobert I, the last of 
the strong Merovingian kings, there were two powerful 
nobles, intrusted with positions of great importance by 
the king, Pippin of Landen, and Arnulf, bishop of Metz. 
After the death of Dagobert, the son of Pippin made a 
premature attempt to seize the crown, and perished with 
his son, and the male line of Pippin came to an end. 
But the marriage of his daughter with the son of Arnulf 
united the possessions and power of the two families, and 
the son of this marriage, Pippin of Heristal, to use the 
names which were later employed to distinguish the Pip- 
pins, soon won a commanding position in the state, 
though not without severe struggles. The Merovingians 
still retained the crown as kings in name, but the real 
control of affairs passed into the hands of Pippin and of 
his descendants, the Mayors of the Palace. 

The battle of Testry, fought in 687, is the turning-point 
of this part of Frankish history. In it the organized 
Austrasian nobles under Pippin, aided by some of the 
Neustrian, triumphed over the tendency towards a cen- 
tralized government. It meant that those elements which 
were really more Teutonic were still to retain the direction 
of affairs in the reunited kingdom, and that Romanizing 
influences, which bade fair to split the Frankish nation 
into two parts, were to be held back for some generations 
yet. The western half of the land was to be brought 
into connection once more with the sources of Teutonic 
life, and under the rule of a thoroughly German family. 

This battle was in form a triumph of the aristocracy 
over the royal power. It was as a representative of the 
nobles, and by their aid, that the new house, the Caro- 
lingian, had secured its power. But the nobles speedily 
found that they had only succeeded in putting a strong 
and determined master in the place of a powerless one. 
The point of view of the Carolingian princes was changed 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 1 47 

at once, as soon as they were in a position to rule in the 
name of the Merovingian king. 

The task before them was by no means an easy one. 
Not merely had the nobles grown strong in the state, but 
the confusion of the last part of the Merovingian period 
had enabled many of them to assume a position virtually 
independent of all government control. These were the 
days of the earliest stage of feudalism, and the political 
disorder — one of its chief causes — allowed in some cases 
an almost complete feudal isolation. A considerable part 
of the work which Pippin of Heristal, and his son Charles, 
called Martel, or the Hammer, had to do was to break 
the power of these local " tyrants," as Einhard calls them 
in his "Life of Charlemagne," and so to make the royal 
power more real. 

But also the outlying provinces, especially where these 
represented a nationality once independent, were in very 
doubtful obedience. Aquitania, Alemannia, Thuringia, 
and Bavaria had taken advantage of the dissensions 
among the Franks to resume a more or less complete 
independence under dukes of their own race. The em- 
pire which the early Merovingians had brought together 
threatened to fall to pieces. It must be reconstructed, 
or the Franks could have no great political future. The 
work of doing this was a long one. Charles Martel 
hardly more than began it. It continued through the 
reign of his son, Pippin, later misnamed the Short, and 
on to the beginning of the reign of Charlemagne. 

Still another great task fell to the early Carolingians. 
The German north — Frisians and Saxons — was a cease- 
less source of danger. These peoples were continually 
attacking the borders, striving to force their way into the 
south, the last wave of the invasions from Germany proper. 
Charles Martel and Pippin maintained a vigorous defence, 
but they could establish no permanent conquests. The 
Christian missionaries, mostly Anglo-Saxons, who at- 



148 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

tempted to convert them, met with no better success, 
and it proved the great labor of Charlemagne's life to 
incorporate them with the Roman and Christian world. 

One decisive victory, gained by Charles Martel, re- 
flected great glory on his family and helped to secure its 
position. The Arab invasion, which had entered Europe 
through Spain, in 711, had not been held back by the 
Pyrenees. The Duke of Aquitania was not strong enough 
alone to resist them, and, in 732, an army of them had 
reached the neighborhood of the Loire, a thousand miles 
north of Gibraltar. There, in the battle of Tours or 
Poitiers, the infantry of the Franks withstood the attacks 
of the Arab horse, and turned back this invasion. Still 
other attacks of theirs had to be met in the south, and 
they held some parts of Septimania and the Rhone valley 
for many years, but they were never again able to pene- 
trate so far into the country, and the danger that Europe 
would be overrun by Mohammedanism, as Asia and Africa 
had been, was past, so far at least as concerns the attack 
from the west. 

The time of Charles Martel, and of Pippin, as Mayor 
of the Palace, was a time of reconstruction for the Frank- 
ish state. The power of the central government was re- 
established. The nobles were brought into obedience, 
and the elements of dissolution held in check. The sub- 
ject nationalities were compelled to give up the indepen- 
dence which they were resuming, and to acknowledge the 
supremacy of the Franks once more. The church, which 
had suffered with the rest of the state, and almost fallen 
apart, was made to feel the effects of the change also. 
The life and morals of the clergy were reformed. The 
councils, its legislative machinery, were used to serve 
public ends, and the vast estates of land, which it had 
gathered into its hands, were made to contribute to the 
support of the army. Pippin called Boniface, the great 
Anglo-Saxon missionary among the Germans, to his aid 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 1 49 

in the work of reconstruction, and, although the strong 
Carolingian princes never gave up their direct control of 
the church, the result was to give the papacy a greater 
influence in the Frankish church than it had had before. 

Now follows a series of events which opens a new and 
greater epoch in Frankish history. 

The kingdom of the Lombards in Italy, though quiet 
for long intervals, was never wholly satisfied with its in- 
complete occupation of that country. As soon as an am- 
bitious king ascended the throne, and had his somewhat 
unruly people in hand, he was very apt to begin to push 
for further territory. This was a constant menace to the 
papacy, and to the independence of the little state of 
which it had come to be practically the sovereign. The 
papal state was not strong enough to insure its own safety, 
though it had defended itself with great skill. Its natural 
protector would have been the emperor at Constantinople, 
still nominal sovereign of Rome and other parts of Italy. 
But Constantinople was far away, and the emperor had 
many more immediate interests which demanded his 
attention. Besides this, the points of dispute between 
the Eastern church and the Roman, upon the worship of 
images and other topics, which were one day to make a 
complete and hostile separation between them, had al- 
ready begun to appear and to create ill feeling. The ap- 
peal which the popes made for protection brought them 
no help, and they had only one recourse left. This was 
to the restored Frankish kingdom, the strongest political 
power of the West. 

Gregory II and Gregory III both appealed to Charles 
M artel to come to their assistance, and the latter sent to 
him the keys of St. Peter's tomb. But Charles did not 
comply. It is probable that he had still too serious work 
at home, and that so long as the position of the Arabs 
in the south was threatening, and plans of further inva- 



150 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

sion on their part not improbable, he could not afford 
to engage in hostilities with the Lombards. 

But his son Pippin felt himself in a more secure posi- 
tion. There was also, on his side, a strong reason for 
a close alliance with the papacy. The plan which the 
son of the first Pippin had attempted to carry out, before 
the hold of his family on the state was secure enough to 
warrant it, could now be taken up again. The Franks 
had been accustomed, for more than sixty years, to see 
the Merovingian kings excluded from all real government, 
and all the duties of the royal office performed by the 
Carolingian princes. Almost all the nobles were now 
also the vassals of Pippin, and the leaders of the church 
would support him. To set aside the Merovingian fam- 
ily, and put the Carolingian on the throne, would seem 
far less revolutionary at this time than it had one hun- 
dred years earlier. Still a sort of religious feeling might 
attach itself to the old royal family, and Pippin needed 
all the support which he could get. Accordingly the first 
move towards the alliance came from him, and an em- 
bassy to Rome, sent with the consent of the Franks, 
laid before the pope the question whether the condition 
of things was a good one where he who bore the title of 
king was without any real power. The answer was a 
satisfactory one, and with the sanction of this high re- 
ligious authority, the last Merovingian king disappeared 
in the cloister. Pippin was elected king by the nobles 
and people, raised on their shields after the old German 
fashion, and, by a new ceremony, the bishops consecrated 
him king in anointing him with holy oil. This took place 
in the year 751. 

Almost immediately after this the advance of the Lom- 
bard king became so threatening that the pope deter- 
mined to go in person to beseech the new king of the 
Franks to come to his aid. His mission was successful. 
Pippin went back with him to Italy, and compelled the 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 151 

Lombards to abandon their conquests. Two years later 
another expedition was necessary, as the Lombard king 
was threatening Rome again. This time, in 755, Pippin 
bestowed on the pope a part of the exarchate of Ravenna, 
which he forced the Lombards to give up, and thus added 
territory on the Adriatic to that around Rome of which 
the popes had already made themselves the virtual sov- 
ereigns. The wishes of the emperor at Constantinople 
were not consulted in this disposition of his property, 
and, without any regard to his rights, the foundations of 
the temporal principality of the popes were securely laid. 
These events were of as wide influence upon the future 
of the Franks as upon that of the papacy. They drew 
still closer that alliance with the church which had always 
been a characteristic of their history. They opened the 
way to a new conquest — that of Italy — of vital necessity 
in their consolidation of Europe; and, still more impor- 
tant, they brought them into direct contact with Rome, 
and so made likely the awakening of imperial ambitions 
in their minds, and made it natural for others to associate 
with them those ideas of a revival of the imperial title 
in the west which had already begun to stir in Italy. 1 

These events bring us to the beginning of the reign of 
Charles the Great — Charlemagne — in 768. A very gen- 
eral opinion has ranked him among the greatest political 
leaders of history. A less favorable judgment, however, 
has not been wanting, and it will, perhaps, afford us the 
best point of view for a brief sketch of his reign and an 
understanding of his place in history, if we try to ascertain 
upon what grounds such high rank can be assigned him. 2 

It is necessary to remember, however, in doing so that 

1 Bury, Later Roman Empire, vol. II, p. 443, n. 1. 

2 See the collection of opinions from various authors in Waitz, Deutsche 
Verfassungsgeschichte, III, pp. 333-340. His own conclusions are given, 
ibid., pp. 327-331- 



152 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the original sources which treat of his reign give us almost 
no statement of his motives or plans. 1 They tell us what 
things he did, but give us scarcely the slightest clew to 
the reason why he did them, or what ultimate purpose 
he had in view. It is necessary to infer the leading ideas 
of his policy from what he did and what he left undone. 
Such inference is certainly proper, and may lead to sound 
conclusions, but it must always lack the character of 
proof, and will seem to some much less conclusive than 
to others. To myself, the theory that Charlemagne was 
a man of the broadest statesmanship appears to explain 
the facts much more perfectly than any other, though 
one must certainly hesitate to affirm that he was con- 
scious to the full of all the bearings of his policy which 
we may seem to detect. 

But such a consciousness is not necessary; indeed, it 
never exists. The statesman is a man who sees the needs 
of his own time, the immediate dangers to which society 
is exposed, the next step which may be taken in advance, 
and, seeing this work which is to be done, sees also how 
to do it, knows what means the conditions of the time will 
allow him to employ, and how to work out the needed 
result with the materials and tools which he must use. 
The ultimate historical results of his work, and even the 
deeper currents of the age, he cannot see. But if he 
truly realizes the needs and opportunities of his time, 
which these deepest currents have created, he does un- 
derstand them, though he does not know it, and he works 
unconsciously in harmony with them. 

Our question, then, is this: Were the things which 
Charlemagne did wisely adapted to meet the needs and 
danger of the time, and to lead the way to a better future? 
Did he do the things which a great statesman ought to 
have done if he had realized the task demanded of him? 

1 Einhard's — Eginhard's — Life of Charlemagne is easily accessible in vari- 
ous translations. 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 1 53 

To answer this question we must first determine, as 
we now look back upon the age, what the things were 
which most of all needed to be done for the secure un- 
folding of civilization. This is not difficult to do. The 
ultimate outcome of the middle ages was to be, as was 
said at the beginning of our study, a new civilization 
based upon that of the classic nations, with the new 
Teutonic race as its active agent. To bring about a 
condition of things which would allow such a civilization 
to arise, three things must be accomplished in the po- 
litical world. In the first place, the invasions must be 
brought to an end. No secure and productive civiliza- 
tion would be possible so long as everything was likely 
to be thrown back into confusion by a new settlement of 
barbarians who must be absorbed and civilized. In the 
second place, the Christian nations of Europe must be 
held together in a common whole, in order that the unity, 
which Rome had established, and which is the foundation 
of Christendom, might be preserved. Finally, the gov- 
ernment of the state must be strong enough to keep 
order and to hold in check anarchy and the brute pas- 
sions, for safety of person and property is indispensable 
to any advancing civilization. All these were secured in 
some way before modern history opened. Had it been 
possible to secure them permanently in the ninth century 
it might have saved the world some centuries of time. 

We have, then, these three things which the statesman 
of Charlemagne's age, if he had been gifted with the 
power to read his own time and to see into the future, 
would have endeavored to accomplish — to guard his em- 
pire against future invasion, to consolidate Christian Eu- 
rope, and to establish a strong central government, pre- 
serving order throughout the whole. 

In taking up for examination the conquests which were 
made by Charlemagne, it seems impossible to believe that 
they were dictated by any other motive than the desire 



154 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

to render permanent the power which the Franks had 
established. That his leading motive was ambition, the 
passion of conquering for the sake of conquering, appears 
entirely irreconcilable with the facts. If Charlemagne 
had looked about him to ascertain from what sources 
new invasions might come to endanger the Frankish 
state, guided also by the experience of the past, so far 
as he would know its history at all in detail, he would 
have been likely to conclude that there were two and 
only two sources of danger, the Arabs of Spain and the 
Saxons of northern Germany. 

As a matter of fact, there was no danger now to be 
feared from the Arabs. They were at strife among them- 
selves, and in no position to undertake further conquests, 
as they had been in the past, and would be again in the 
near future. Very possibly this fact explains why Charle- 
magne pushed his conquests no farther than he did in 
that direction, but satisfied himself with a few campaigns 
and a little strip of territory in northeastern Spain. 

The Saxons were a very different enemy. For more 
than a hundred years they had kept up almost constant 
warfare on the Frankish borders, as earlier still the Ger- 
mans had along the Roman frontiers. If any new Ger- 
man invasion was to repeat the history of the earlier 
one, it was from them that it must come. Charlemagne 
certainly acted as if he realized this fact. They were a 
stubborn foe, but his determination was more stubborn 
still. There was apparently far less to be gained from 
them than from Spain. They were poor and uncivilized. 
Their land was a cold and hard wilderness; indeed, for 
purposes of mere conquest, it would seem as if he could 
have gone in no other direction so difficult and so little 
remunerative. But he made their subjugation the con- 
stant business of thirty years. He led his army into their 
land, compelled them to submit and to become Chris- 
tians in name, and established officers and regulations for 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 1 55 

their government. But hardly had he turned his back 
when his work was all undone, Christianity thrown off, 
and his officers driven out. With infinite patience he 
did the work over and over again, generally with wise 
measures, sometimes with unwise, as in the massacre of 
Verden, but in the end he succeeded. They acknowl- 
edged his superiority, submitted to his government, and 
accepted Christianity. In no very long time the teach- 
ings of the missionaries had replaced their compulsory 
faith with a more genuine Christianity, and within a 
few generations they looked upon him as the founder, 
rather than the destroyer, of their national existence, 
and reckoned him among the great apostles of the Chris- 
tian religion. Their incorporation in the Roman Chris- 
tian system of things was complete, and the invasions 
were over forever. The Hungarians were to make dev- 
astating inroads, and the Northmen conquered England 
and made some settlements on the mainland, but within 
the limits of Charlemagne's empire no more new and 
independent states could be founded by armies of invad- 
ing barbarians. 

In the way of consolidation, Charlemagne had but little 
more to do than to put the finishing touches upon a proc- 
ess long going on and almost completed before his day. 
Central and southern Germany, and the Lombard state, 
and the fringe of Greek territory of which he took pos- 
session, were already marked out for Frankish occupa- 
tion before his reign began, and in no direction, except 
against the Saxons, were his conquests pushed farther 
than to give him security from attack, as against the 
Slavs and Danes, and in southern Italy, or to connect 
his territories with one another and round them into a 
compact whole, as in the Danube valley. 

Of the importance of this part of his work for the fu- 
ture, and of the way in which it continued the work of 
Rome, he could have had no conception. What he was 



156 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

striving to do was to render this Frankish empire secure 
and permanent. But he did bring together, into a com- 
mon political union, nearly all the peoples which were to 
form the great nations of the future, and those which lay 
outside his immediate rule seem also to have looked upon 
him as in some direct way their head. 1 

Finally, in no part of his work does the political ge- 
nius of Charlemagne appear so evident as in the measures 
which he adopted to strengthen the power of the cen- 
tral government. It had been the great weakness of all 
the German governments of earlier generations that they 
did not make their power felt and obeyed in every local- 
ity in the state. The result had been disorder and con- 
fusion and the growth of narrowing local interests in the 
place of general and national ones. Charlemagne's task, 
as it presented itself to him, would very likely have 
seemed to be to secure obedience and order, but if this 
could have been done, if a thoroughly centralized govern- 
ment could have been established and made permanent, 
it would have meant also the union of the various sub- 
ject peoples into a common nationality, and a rapidly 
advancing civilization. 

The chief executive officer of the early Frankish state 
was the count — the graf — administering in the name of 
the king a subdivision of the state, the county. After 
the conquest this office had been very considerably de- 
veloped under the Roman influence, and its duties wid- 
ened, especially upon the judicial side, and it came to 
be theoretically an executive, military, and judicial office, 
representing the king and not ill adapted to bring the 
central government into contact with all parts of the 
kingdom. But it was natural to choose for the office 
some large landholder of the county, who would have 
local interests and local ambitions, and, though the Mer- 
ovingian kings seem to have recognized the danger of 

1 See Einhard's Life of Charlemagne, chap. XVI. 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 1 57 

this, and to some extent to have sought to avoid it, the 
nobles, whose interests lay in the opposite direction, were 
in the main successful in forcing this policy upon them. 
It is evident that the prerogatives of the count's office, 
the local exercise of sovereignty, would be of great ad- 
vantage to the noble in building up a principality of his 
own, and they were very commonly used for this purpose, 
even to the extent of forcing the free landholders of the 
district into dependent or vassal relations to the count. 
This turning of the office into a local power greatly im- 
paired its value as an instrument of the general govern- 
ment, and there was imperative need of reformation at 
this point if the state was really to control its subjects. 

Charlemagne made a most vigorous effort to force the 
counts to be faithful to their duties as agents of his gov- 
ernment, and to cease the abuse of their powers for pri- 
vate ends. He certainly did bring about a great change 
in these respects, but that his success was not so great 
as he wished is evident from the frequent denunciations 
in his laws of the local usurpation of power. Even if his 
success had been complete, the experience of the past 
would show that there was here a constant danger to 
be guarded against and that the state needed some more 
efficient means of overseeing the counts and of holding 
them strictly to their duties. The practical statesman- 
ship of Charlemagne seems clear in the arrangement which 
he devised for this purpose. 

Like almost every other case of the making of new in- 
stitutions in history, it was the adaptation of an earlier 
institution to a new and wider use. Charlemagne got 
the suggestion for the new office from the earlier royal 
missi — missi dominici — messengers sent out by the king 
for special purposes, the inspection of the royal domain 
lands for example. This office he gradually adapted to 
the new purpose he had in mind until, apparently by 802, 
it had become a most effective instrument of government. 



158 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

The details of the arrangement vary greatly at differ- 
ent times, but in general they seem to have been like 
this: The empire was divided into large districts, or cir- 
cuits, containing a considerable number of counties. To 
each of these districts missi were sent annually, usually 
two in number, different men each year, one a high officer 
of the church and the other a layman of rank. On com- 
ing to their district they divided it into subdistricts ac- 
cording to geographical convenience, each containing a 
number of counties. In each of these subdivisions they 
held an assembly four times in their year of office — in 
January, April, July, and October. To this assembly 
must come all the counts and bishops of the subdistricts, 
all the subordinate officers of the counties and bishoprics, 
and all the vassals of the king. Representatives of the 
freemen of the territory were selected to report upon the 
conduct of affairs and to inquire into abuses, and any of 
the inhabitants might enter complaint before the missi 
concerning any special act of oppression. In this way 
the administration of the count and of the bishop were 
kept under close watch, and accusations of injustice or 
misuse of power on their part were quickly heard by the 
central government. The missi had the right themselves 
to hear appeals, to correct abuses, and to punish the local 
officers of their districts for disobedience or insubordi- 
nation. They were supposed to represent the king, and 
to have the rights which he would have had if present in 
person, but especially important cases seem to have been 
referred directly to the king for decision. They also made 
a tour of inspection through the different counties and 
might hold courts in each of them. At the close of their 
year of service they drew up written reports to the king 
of the state of things in their circuits, and these formed 
the basis of instructions to the new missi of the following 
year. 

Such an office was certainly very wisely adapted to 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 1 59 

meet the difficulties of the time, to hold the local officers 
faithful to their public duties, and to bring the power of 
central government into direct contact with every local- 
ity, and make it respected and obeyed. 1 The best com- 
ment upon its purpose and usefulness is the fact that, as 
the power of the general government grew weaker under 
the successors of Charlemagne, the office gradually dis- 
appeared, leaving, if anything, only faint traces of its for- 
mer existence. 2 

For the defence of the frontier — mark, the marches — 
the office of graf took on a new form, which developed in 
time into a new feudal rank — the markgraf, marchisus, 
marquis. To the markgraf was assigned a much larger 
territory than to the ordinary count, and he was allowed 
to exercise more extensive power. In this same period 
appeared also the vicecomes — the viscount — who acted as 
a representative of the count, in his absence, or when he 
held more than one county. 

Under Charlemagne's government the old national as- 
semblies with legislative rights are not to be found. As- 
semblies were held at regular intervals which were like 
them in form, but if there is anything in these assemblies 
which may be taken to represent the people, it had no 
influence upon legislation. Assemblies of the nobles, lay 

1 Under the Carolingians the office of duke, as an executive and military 
office over a number of counties, practically disappeared, and the title was 
used only exceptionally. The reason for this seems to have been, the way 
in which the office had been connected, in the later Merovingian times, with 
the aspirations for national independence among the subject peoples, Ba- 
varians and Aquitanians, for example, where it had allowed the develop- 
ment of what was really a royal power. The missi in Charlemagne's gov- 
ernment served the same purpose that the dukes might have done, though 
in a much better way. 

2 B runner expressed the opinion in his Entstehung der Schwurgerickte (1872), 
p. 154, that the itinerant or circuit justices of England (and so naturally of 
the United States) descended from the missi of Charlemagne through the 
Normans. The connection with the Carolingian missi through the ninth 
and tenth centuries is somewhat difficult to prove by documentary evidence, 
but the probability of such a relationship is very great. 



l6o MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

and ecclesiastic, sometimes acting together, seem to have 
had a consulting influence and a formal right of consent, 
but the practical legislative right was apparently exer- 
cised by the king, as would naturally be the case in a 
strong government growing out of a past of such political 
uncertainty. 1 

Besides the institutions of government given special 
shape by Charlemagne, two other facts of a different 
sort, but quite as important, indicate the character of his 
policy, and would tend to produce the same results — per- 
manence of order and a renewal of civilization. They 
are his revival of schools and education and his renewing 
of the title of emperor of Rome in the West. 

Of Charlemagne's revival of schools we know unfor- 
tunately too little to reconstruct his general plan or to 
determine how wide his purpose was. 2 We know there 
was a palace school, in which the children of the king 
were taught and those of the great nobles and promising 
children from the provinces, and where boys were trained 
for public employment. In this school Alcuin taught, 
who had been educated in England, and we know that 
Charlemagne sought teachers for his schools wherever 
else anything of learning had remained, as in northern 
Italy. We know also that schools were to be maintained 
by the monasteries and cathedral churches, which would 
naturally be of an intermediate grade, and we suspect, 
from the regulations for his own diocese of a bishop who 
was also employed as a royal missus, that there was an 
intention, or desire at least, of establishing free elemen- 

1 Perhaps no part of Charlemagne's political activity has been discussed 
with such varying opinions as his legislation. If to be a great lawgiver 
means to formulate broad principles of justice, which shall be capable of 
wide application to new cases, not thought of at the time, then he was not 
a great lawgiver. His legislation is rather a series of special laws to meet 
immediate cases, as they came up, and covering a very wide range of in- 
terest, but it was not creative of a permanent system of law. 

2 See Mullinger, Schools of Charles the Great; and West, Alcuin and the 
Rise of the Christian Schools. 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE l6l 

tary public schools in each parish, to be taught by the 
parish priest. This would be a very wise and well-organ- 
ized system for the times, if it really was what Char- 
lemagne had in mind, and if it could have been carried 
into effect. 

We know perhaps more as to the results which fol- 
lowed Charlemagne's revival of schools than we do as 
to the actual details of his educational system. The 
legal documents, letters, and writings of the next genera- 
tion show a very decided improvement in style and ac- 
curacy, and this improvement was never lost. 1 The 
schools themselves, in places at least, continued to flour- 
ish even during the dissolution of his empire, as they had 
not before, and his efforts for education may clearly be 
reckoned as the first step towards the revival of learning. 

Some of the original sources represent that the act of 
Pope Leo III, in placing a crown upon the head of Char- 
lemagne as he was praying in St. Peter's on Christmas 
day of the year 800, and proclaiming him emperor of 
Rome, was a surprise to him and not acceptable. 2 But 
the plan of reviving the empire in the West must have 
been under discussion; there are indications that it had 
been thought of before the beginning of Charlemagne's 
reign, and the pope would hardly have ventured upon 
such a step unless he had known that it was in accor- 
dance with the general idea of the time. Charlemagne 
may have been surprised at the time chosen, and dis- 
pleased with the assumption of the leading part in the 
drama by the pope, but there can be no reasonable doubt 
that he had determined upon taking the title before long. 
It must have seemed to every one at the time the per- 

1 There is a touch of the genuine spirit of the Renaissance to be seen in 
the case of the monk who takes advantage of a pilgrimage to Italy to copy 
inscriptions with exemplary accuracy. See Wattenbach, Geschichtsquellen, 
vol. I, pp. 173 and 280. (Seventh edition.) 

2 See Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, chap. V, where the accounts of three 
annalists are translated. 



1 62 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

fectly natural thing to do. His empire corresponded very 
nearly with the western half of the Roman Empire, more 
nearly than anything which had existed since. Men had 
believed all along, in a theoretical way, in the continuation 
of the Roman Empire and in the overlordship of the em- 
peror in Constantinople over the West and these theories 
were still consciously held. Just now the power in the 
East was in the hands of a woman, something which the 
people of the West regarded as especially unworthy and 
impossible. The time was favorable for a renewal of the 
title in Rome, the man was at hand, the empire was 
undeniably reconstructed in territory and in strength. 
The actors in the event may not, perhaps, have thought 
of themselves exactly as Romans, but they unquestion- 
ably thought of the empire as a direct and unbroken con- 
tinuation of that of Augustus and Theodosius. 

To Charlemagne himself, the direct gain which might 
come from a revival of the empire may have been as im- 
portant a consideration as the glory of the title itself. 
The Roman Empire meant, above all things else, perma- 
nence and consolidation. With no political structure of 
history has the idea of eternal endurance so connected itself 
as with the Roman Empire. This feeling was not yet 
entirely extinct, as is evident from the way in which this 
revival was thought of at the time as entirely natural 
and in no way extraordinary. It would be a great help 
to the permanence of the empire of the Franks if the 
ideas and feelings which belonged to the Roman Empire 
could be identified with it. Again, the only government 
of which the men of the West could know anything, under 
which the diverse nationalities, which had been brought 
together by the conquests of the Franks, could become 
equal and organic parts of a single state, was the Roman 
Empire. Charlemagne might be recognized as their na- 
tional ruler by Franks and Lombards and Saxons and 
Bavarians, but the problem of his day, and of the future, 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 1 63 

was how to unite these all together into a single whole, 
a new homogeneous nationality, in which the old race 
lines should have disappeared. The Roman Empire 
might do this, and it alone could. That Charlemagne 
consciously reasoned about the matter in this way is 
hardly possible. It is altogether probable, however, that 
he did believe that the taking of the title would be of 
very great help to him in his struggle to consolidate 
and render lasting the power which he had created. 

The attempt of Charlemagne was a failure. His reign 
was not long enough to allow such a unity of races, and 
such a solidarity of law and government, to form them- 
selves as had formed under Rome, and without this his 
work could not be permanent. Even if his own life could 
have continued through the whole ninth century, it is 
very doubtful whether his genius would have been suffi- 
cient to hold in check the forces of separation and dis- 
order. They certainly were too strong for the weaker 
men who succeeded him, and his empire fell apart and 
the strong government which he had established was 
overpowered. 

Some of the special things which he accomplished were 
permanent contributions to civilization, like the conquest 
of the Saxons and the revival of schools. Many of his 
special political expedients disappeared with the strong 
government which they had helped to sustain, as may 
have been the case with the missi. But there was a pro- 
found and permanent influence of the empire and good 
government of Charlemagne upon the general course of 
history, though they themselves may not have con- 
tinued. 

He had created and sustained for a generation a really 
powerful central government, obeyed and respected every- 
where, and this fact was not forgotten in the days of 
feudal confusion and anarchy which followed. Men 



164 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

looked back to it, as they had earlier looked back upon 
the Roman Empire, as an age when things were as they 
ought to be — a kind of golden age, when most marvel- 
lous deeds were done, to be told of in poetry and romance. 
The ideal of a strong king and a real government was so 
deeply impressed upon the time that feudalism was never 
able to destroy it, as logically it should have done, but 
itself always retained the character which Charlemagne 
had been the chief one to give it, of a constitutional or- 
ganization for the state, exercising its powers and rights 
as delegated to it, when strictly interpreted, and in the 
name of a general government which theoretically must 
continue to exist. 

His empire also brought together for a time all the 
Christian nations of the western portion of the Continent 
in a real union. The unity which Rome had established 
had been, for centuries past, merely theoretical. There 
was no objective fact corresponding to it. The suprem- 
acy of the emperor at Constantinople over the whole em- 
pire was too shadowy to be of any real value in main- 
taining even the idea of unity. The church had formed 
a real unity, but the political world had none. The the- 
ory itself would soon have passed out of the minds of 
men if it had never taken form in fact. Charlemagne, 
if we may say so, made the facts conform to the theory. 
At the beginning of the period of most complete separa- 
tion, when the feudal system was about to render the 
existence even of state governments practically impossi- 
ble, and to divide Europe into the smallest of fragments, 
he recreated, for a generation or more, the Roman unity 
as an actual fact, and strengthened the belief in its con- 
tinued existence, as the ideal political constitution for 
the world. His revival of the empire rendered possible 
its second revival, on a somewhat different basis, by the 
kings of Germany, and laid the foundation for that ideal 
structure, the Holy Roman Empire, alongside the Holy 



THE FRANKS AND CHARLEMAGNE 1 65 

Roman Church — an ideal which grew more and more 
perfect in theory as the actual empire declined in power. 

But if the empire had never been revived a second 
time by Otto I, and if the theory of the Holy Roman 
Empire had never been developed, the real unity which 
Charlemagne created would have been an enormous rein- 
forcement to the influence of the church in holding the 
nations of the West together in a common system, and 
an especially decisive aid in this direction, because with 
its strong unity it cut the age of confusion and separa- 
tion in half, and held the disintegrating forces of the 
time in check in their full career. 

Of still further significance is the fact that Charle- 
magne represented, even more completely than Theod- 
oric or any other of his predecessors had done, the union 
of German and Roman elements into a common whole. 
In Charlemagne personally and in his government they 
are manifestly united, not as two distinct and separate 
sets of things brought together consciously and with in- 
tention, and held together by an artificial arrangement, 
but they are mingled in a living and natural union, as 
if no one were conscious of any difference between them. 
Within a short time at least after his death, we have 
evidence in language, and in customary law, and in more 
or less clearly felt race feeling, that the same sort of a 
union had taken place in the mass of the people. The 
German had not been raised to the level of the classical 
civilization. The knowledge and culture lost had not 
been recovered, but enormous progress towards this re- 
covery had been made when the German and the Roman 
had melted together into a single people, and begun to 
develop a new national consciousness. 

The unity, which Charlemagne had formed, might be 
broken up, the empire might fall again into abeyance, the 
strong government disappear, but in such ways as have 
been indicated, his work was permanent. 



CHAPTER VIII 

AFTER CHARLEMAGNE 

The empire of Charlemagne passed at first into the 
hands of his son Louis and its formal unity was pre- 
served. But Louis was by no means the equal of his 
father in strength and decision, and the control of af- 
fairs passed by degrees out of his hands to the bishops 
and the great nobles, to his sons, and even to his wife. 
The elements of disunion, repressed by Charlemagne, be- 
gan to reappear; but unity suffered less in his reign than 
the efficiency of the central government, which con- 
stantly declined — the missi for example were rendered 
less effective by making the archbishop permanently 
one of the missi for his archbishopric. 

On the death of Louis, his eldest son, Lothaire, became 
emperor, with a nominal supremacy over his two broth- 
ers, who had received subordinate kingdoms. A civil 
war between the brothers resulted in the treaty of Ver- 
dun, in 843, a rearrangement of territories which has 
probably had more influence on later times than any 
other ever made. By this partition Lothaire retained 
the title of emperor, with Italy and a long, narrow strip 
of land connecting Italy with the North Sea, and includ- 
ing the rivers Rhone and Rhine, separating in this way 
the subkingdoms of his two brothers, one in what is 
now Germany, and the other in what is now France, and 
bringing his territory through its whole length into direct 
contact with theirs. Nearly or quite all this territory 
assigned to Lothaire came to be connected at a later 

166 



AFTER CHARLEMAGNE 167 

time with the empire, as held by the German king, but it 
was bound to Germany by only a very loose tie, and in 
it easily arose the semi-independent and finally indepen- 
dent little states of Europe, Holland and Belgium, and 
Switzerland and Savoy, while over other fragments of it 
France and Germany have been contending through nearly 
all later history. 

On the death of the grandsons of Charlemagne their 
territories were still further divided, and the double proc- 
ess of separation and .of the destruction of the central 
power went on without hindrance. For a moment, al- 
most at the end of the Carolingian period, the empire 
was reunited under Charles the Fat, but he was entirely 
without power or capacity, and after a few years he was 
deposed (887), and the territorial unity of the empire was 
finally destroyed. 

We call this the fall of the Carolingian empire, and it 
was so in one sense, but the term is unfortunate here as 
elsewhere in history, because it is apt to imply more 
than is meant. It must not be regarded as in any sense 
a fall or decline in civilization. It was more like a re- 
turn to conditions which had prevailed under the Mero- 
vingian kings. These conditions had been dominated 
and controlled by three generations of remarkable princes, 
who had held in check successfully the worst tendencies 
of the time. Now, when the government passed into the 
hands of ordinary men, these conditions began to pre- 
vail again, but they prevailed with a difference. That 
the net result of the Carolingian empire had been a great 
gain has been made evident. The ideas of unity and 
order and good government had been so strengthened 
that a return to the situation of things in Merovingian 
times could never be complete, and those conditions 
could never be so dangerous as formerly. The great 
Carolingian princes had been compelled in one respect, 



1 68 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

indeed, to recognize and continue these conditions. They 
had been obliged, in order to accomplish their own pur- 
poses, to encourage and strengthen the growing feudal 
institutions, as we shall see later, and to give them legal- 
ity. But whatever they may have done in this direc- 
tion was far more than balanced by the vigor with which 
they subordinated these institutions to the state. With- 
out their aid the feudal system would inevitably have 
developed as it did, though perhaps less rapidly. But 
without their strong control of the feudal powers in their 
formative period the idea that these powers were exer- 
cised under the superior rights of the general govern- 
ment might easily have disappeared, as it actually did 
here and there. 

We are to regard this age, then, as continuing the 
Merovingian, but with decided gains over that period. 
On the surface, however, its most characteristic feature 
is the decline of the powers which the three great Caro- 
lingians had built up, and our first task is to ascertain 
the immediate causes of this decline, a thing not difficult 
to do. It is not possible to attribute it, as we are per- 
haps at first tempted to do, to the weakness of the rulers. 
Some of them were certainly men of inferior ability, men 
who would be regarded as weak sovereigns even to-day, 
when in most countries a stupid king or an insane one is 
as good as any, or even better. But the most of them 
seem to have been men at least of ordinary ability. It 
was a time, however, when a man of ordinary ability 
could not be master of the situation. A king, in order 
really to govern such a turbulent society, would have 
required the extraordinary genius of a Charlemagne, if 
not something more, and no one had that. The family 
had produced about as many generations of genius as 
any in history, and it was rather because it did not con- 
tinue to do this than because it sank below the level of 
average men that it proved unequal to its task. 



AFTER CHARLEMAGNE 1 69 

Nor can the cause be found in those partitions of ter- 
ritory between the members of the family which are so 
frequent during the period. The old Frankish notion of 
equal division among the heirs apparently could not be 
shaken off by the Carolingians, and subdivision followed 
subdivision to the end of the period. This, no doubt, 
weakened the idea of unity, and occasionally aided the 
deeper causes of separation, but it must not be regarded 
in itself as a very efficient force in that direction. Had 
the general conditions been more favorable, such parti- 
tions might have gone further than they did without 
serious consequences, and, indeed, they might have been 
of assistance to the kings in maintaining a real control 
of affairs by reducing the size of the territory to be con- 
trolled. 

More serious than these, as intensifying the general 
conditions with which a government had to contend, 
were the severe attacks which were made on all the 
boundaries of the empire during this age. Saracens, 
Hungarians, and Northmen were trying to force their 
way in from every direction. In the Carolingian period 
proper the most dangerous of these attacks was that of 
the Northmen. Following exactly the methods of the 
earlier Saxons, they appeared without warning upon the 
coast or up the rivers with their swift boats, collected 
what plunder they could in a sudden raid inland, and 
were off before resistance could be organized. The great 
rivers of Gaul opened to them the heart of the country, 
and the distance to which they ascended them shows 
most clearly how little general organization there was, 
and how entirely each locality was thrown upon its own 
resources for protection. This absence of a general sys- 
tem of defence, this necessity which was placed upon 
each locality of looking out for its own protection in the 
face of a constantly menacing danger, is a fact of pri- 
mary importance at this time. It greatly strengthened 



170 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

those institutions which organized the means of private 
and local defence, institutions which similar conditions 
had produced in earlier times, and which had continued 
their development even under Charlemagne. 

With this fact — the fact that these institutions had 
now become very strong and grown into a great general 
organization, the feudal system, so strong that it was 
no longer possible to control its members or to prevent 
their exercise of royal prerogatives — we have reached 
the deepest and most effective cause of the fall of the 
Carolingian power. 

The feudal system was itself an offspring of the pre- 
vailing conditions and gave expression to them. Whether 
or not the later Carolingians would have been able to 
maintain an effective government if the feudal system 
had not been in the way to prevent, certain it is that 
this system had taken its beginning in a time when from 
one cause or another an effective government had not 
been maintained, in the last days of the empire and in 
the Merovingian period. Since then nothing had occurred 
to check its development, though Charlemagne had been 
able to prevent any evil results from it in his own time. 
It had now reached a point of development which made 
it in itself an active factor in the state independent of 
the conditions which had brought it into existence. It 
had established itself on firm foundations. It had ab- 
sorbed to some extent already, and was absorbing more 
and more, the functions, powers, and rights of the cen- 
tral government. It had produced a body of men secure 
in their position, able to dictate terms to the monarch 
at critical moments as the price of their assistance, 1 and 

1 The most familiar instance of this is the famous capitulary of Kiersy, 
obtained from Charles the Bald, in 877. This was not, as has sometimes 
been said, the legal recognition of a hereditary right to benefices, but it 
was an agreement on the part of the king to recognize such a right for the 
special occasion, showing, however, the existence of a strong tendency to 
turn offices and fiefs into hereditary possessions. 



AFTER CHARLEMAGNE 171 

able to beat off the attacks of the Northmen where the 
state failed to do its duty. It had built up, in a word, 
little principalities everywhere which usurped for the lo- 
cality the place of the state and divided the territory 
into small fragments tending towards complete indepen- 
dence. 

So while the difficulty of intercommunication made it 
hard to maintain a real control of affairs at a distance, 
and while the ignorance and barbarism of the time made 
impossible those general ideas and common interests and 
feelings which are the foundation of a national govern- 
ment, the feudal system deprived the state of its organs 
of action. Its executive offices, its judicial system, its 
legislation, its income, and its army all passed into the 
hands of private individuals, and were made use of by 
them, theoretically, as representing the state, but in 
reality beyond its control. The king was practically 
shut up to whatever power the feudal lords might be 
willing to concede to him at the moment. 

The origin of this system and the state of things re- 
sulting from it will be discussed in detail in the next 
chapter. Here it is necessary to fix in mind the fact 
that the Carolingian family, which had done not a little 
to give it definite form and position in the state, fell its 
victim and lost the throne because they could no longer 
control their own vassals. 

But the declining power of the Carolingian family, 
and the fact that even in the small states into which 
their great empire had separated they could not really 
govern, is not the only fact of importance which this 
period signifies in the political history of the world. It 
was not an age of chaos alone. In the breaking up of the 
Carolingian empire the European nations as they exist to- 
day first took shape. 

How much of real national consciousness there was in 
the states that separated from one another at this time 



172 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

it is not easy to say. There is danger that we may read 
into that earlier time, when it could hardly have existed, 
the idea of national feeling which we now have. Cer- 
tainly patriotism and a feeling of race unity and of na- 
tional pride do not appear as positive forces in history, 
whose workings can be clearly traced, till near the end 
of the middle ages. There is evidence, however, that there 
was at least some slight national consciousness at this time; 
that the people in one of these new states began to distin- 
guish themselves from those in another, and, however much 
they might still be divided within the state, to look upon 
themselves as more closely related to one another than 
to the people of another state. The new languages had 
begun to form themselves — a clear proof of the melting of 
Romans and Germans into a common people — and these 
would help to form the idea of national distinctions. 
Common names for the people of the whole state seem 
to have come into use in this period. The church of 
each state had its own national organization, and this 
furnished one of the most powerful influences of the age, 
both in the formation of the new state governments and 
in the growth of a real national unity. 

But whatever may be true of the formation of a na- 
tional consciousness at this time — and when the most is 
said it must have been very faint — the modern nations 
did secure in this period their geographical outlines very 
much as they exist to-day, and separate political organi- 
zations were formed, corresponding to these territories 
and uniting them — however loosely — still uniting them 
into a single state. These political organizations have 
developed into the modern governments, and within the 
geographical limits thus secured the feeling of national 
unity and patriotism grew up in the course of time. 

It was in Germany that the Carolingian family was 
first permanently abandoned for a national dynasty. 
Arnulf, who was the last Carolingian who really ruled 



AFTER CHARLEMAGNE 1 73 

in Germany, was a man of energy, and the ten years 
and more of his reign, from 887 to 899, was a continual 
struggle against the Northmen and Slavs. Against these 
external enemies he was successful, but he did nothing 
to prevent — in some cases he aided — the growth of the 
local feudal dominions which were as serious a danger. 
After him came a dozen years of minority rule, when 
naturally the local powers grew rapidly, and the devas- 
tating invasions of the Hungarians, which began within a 
year or two after the death of Arnulf, strengthened this 
tendency by increasing the confusion and insecurity with 
which the general government could not cope. 

The feudal system did not reach its maturity quite so 
early in Germany as in France, not having grown up 
naturally there but being rather introduced from with- 
out. But the conditions which favored its growth were 
like those in France, and the results in the end were 
the same. The general insecurity of the times, the con- 
stant need of protection, the weakness or the distance 
of the central government, and perhaps the lack of any 
strong conception of a national unity, enabled the strong 
man of the locality to found a little state within the 
state, and to extend his power, if circumstances especially 
favored him, over a large territory. 

The old tribal differences which still existed among the 
Germans, notwithstanding all the efforts of the Carolin- 
gians to obliterate them, came to the aid of these little 
substates — it would be more accurate perhaps to say that 
these differences were the foundation on which they were 
first built. The Carolingians had abolished the old ducal 
office which represented a tribal royal power, and they 
had endeavored to prevent any continuance of the tribal 
life in the arrangements which they made for local gov- 
ernment. During the time of their decline, however, the 
old tribal consciousness had begun to reassert itself, and 
the ducal office to reappear, at first without any recogni- 



174 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

tion or legal right, but as existing by force of circum- 
stances and by common consent. 

Aided by circumstances of this sort, a family having 
its original seat in the eastern part of the Saxon land, 
in a region exposed at once to the attacks of the Danes 
and of the Slavs, had gradually extended its power, by 
the skill of its leadership and the bravery of its defence, 
over the whole tribe of the Saxons, and finally over the 
Thuringians also, and created a dominion which, under 
the ducal name, was really a little kingdom. Another 
family in Franconia — the land of the east Franks — had 
risen in a similar way, aided by the favor of King Arnulf, 
to a power almost as great, but it had made good its posi- 
tion only after a severe struggle with dangerous rivals. 
In Suabia and Bavaria the tribal spirit also revived and 
raised local leaders to the position of practically inde- 
pendent dukes. The feudal system was spreading very 
rapidly throughout Germany at this time, and its forms 
greatly helped on the rise of these local dynasties; but 
it is important to notice, as has been suggested, that 
these little states into which the east Frankish kingdom 
threatened to separate at the moment of the extinction 
of the Carolingian family there, were based at the outset 
rather on the old tribal differences than on feudal con- 
structions. 

It was the influence of the church of Germany — a 
united organization, finding all its interests involved in 
the continuance of a united political government — com- 
bined perhaps with a deep impression which the unity 
created by Charlemagne had made, and very possibly 
also aided by an incipient national consciousness, which 
prevented this threatened separation from being com- 
pletely realized, and formed a new national government 
in the place of the one which had disappeared. 

On the death of the last Carolingian, an assembly 
somewhat national in character came together to choose 



AFTER CHARLEMAGNE 1 75 

a new king. They turned naturally first to the Saxon 
duke Otto, the most powerful man in Germany, but he 
was now old and was not willing to undertake the bur- 
dens of the new office. By his influence Konrad, the 
duke of the eastern Franks, was elected king. This elec- 
tion was not made in forgetfulness of the rights of the 
Carolingians, whose representatives were still to be found 
west of the Rhine. Their claims were kept in mind, and 
it was thought indeed to be something in favor of Kon- 
rad that he was descended from a daughter of Louis the 
Pious. But there seems to have been no serious move- 
ment in favor of the old house, nor any feeling that it 
could adequately meet the needs and serve the interests 
of the times. 

Konrad was a brave and earnest man who had a high 
conception of the duties and rights of his office and strove 
manfully to realize that conception. But the difficulties 
were too great for him to overcome. He did not have in 
his own local power, and in the tribe of the Franks, which 
must be his main reliance in establishing a real govern- 
ment, strength enough to force the other local and tribal 
powers into obedience, and his reign was a failure in this 
respect. It is told us that at his death he recognized 
this fact, and saw that if a national government was to 
be made effective it could be done only by his great rival 
whose personal power was so much stronger than his 
own, by the duke of the Saxons. Following his advice, the 
Germans passed over the Franconian family and elected 
Henry the Saxon king, and from his accession in 918, the 
process of forming a national government for Germany 
really begins. 

Of this national government Henry hardly more than 
laid the foundation, but he did this with great skill and 
with a statesman's recognition of the things that were 
possible in the circumstances. He brought the dukes to 
a formal obedience and to a recognition of the kingship, 



176 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

but he did this by diplomatic tact rather than by force 
of arms, and he left to them almost complete and inde- 
pendent local control. It was too early yet to break 
their power in this particular. He organised the national 
forces for a most successful resistance to the Hungarians, 
founded many fortified posts in north and east Germany 
which grew later into cities, led the Saxons on rapidly 
in the line of development begun for them by Charle- 
magne, opened again the struggle with the Slavs for the 
valley of the Elbe, and finally drew closer the alliance 
between the royal power which was forming and the 
church which could give it so great assistance. 

It was by no means the least of his successes that he 
secured the quiet and undisputed succession of his son 
Otto to the throne. Otto does not seem to have had his 
father's diplomatic ability, but he was a man of strong 
determination and quick action, and he built rapidly on 
the foundations which his father had laid. The dukes 
and the semi-independent tribes seem to have recognized 
the fact that it was a life-and-death struggle for them, 
and they broke into open rebellion almost immediately 
after his accession. The victory over this open resis- 
tance, which Otto everywhere gained, enabled him to go 
further than his father had ventured. He deposed the 
old ducal families from their half-royal position, set in 
their place devoted friends of his own, and made the 
duke once more, if not completely, yet more nearly, an 
officer of the state. Finally, he put beside the duke the 
Pjalzgraf, or palatine count, to be a check on the ducal 
power and to administer the royal domain lands scat- 
tered through the duchy, and so not merely deprived the 
duke of one source of his power but also established an 
important means of direct connection between the cen- 
tral government and the locality. It was the first step, 
and a long one, towards a really consolidated govern- 
ment for the nation. If this policy could have been con- 



AFTER CHARLEMAGNE 1 77 

tinued for a generation or two without interruption the 
work would have been done and a real state created 
corresponding to the language and the race. But this 
was not destined to be. Hardly was Otto master of things 
at home when he was called upon to go to Italy and 
right wrongs which had been committed there, and he 
could not resist the temptation. The dream of the em- 
pire still lived in the German mind, and Otto was per- 
haps more ready to go than the Capetian princes of 
France were to embrace similar opportunities offered to 
them, because his power at home was so much greater 
than theirs. 

In Italy no one of the local powers into which the 
country had separated, there as everywhere else on the 
fall of the Carolingian empire, had been able to gain 
sufficient strength permanently to overcome the others, 
and to lay the foundation of a united government as 
it had been the fortune of some to do in France and in 
Germany. The existence of the papacy at the head of 
a little state in central Italy, strengthened by rights of 
ecclesiastical rule which extended over Europe, had fur- 
ther complicated the situation, and Italy had been the 
scene of more constant civil strife than the other coun- 
tries, and with far less meaning or result. It was con- 
sequently very easy for a foreign prince, not dependent 
upon the country for his resources, to exact at least a 
formal acknowledgment of his right to govern. In a first 
expedition Otto compelled a recognition of his right to 
settle disputed points and assumed the title of King of 
Lombardy. In a second, in 962, he was crowned em- 
peror of Rome. 

This might seem to him, and to the men of his time, 
though it was not done apparently without some oppo- 
sition in Germany, to be a very great extension of his 
power and a most glorious achievement for the German 
nation, but it was in reality a fatal step both for Ger- 



178 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

many and for Italy. By this step it was finally made 
impossible to organize a national government for Italy; 
and the kings of Germany, in the place of their proper 
task, the consolidation of their own state, were given 
what seemed to them a more glorious mission, the recon- 
struction of the Roman Empire. But to do both things, 
in the face of the difficulties which each presented, 
was a human impossibility, and naturally the interest 
which they thought to be the smaller — the German na- 
tion — was sacrificed to the greater. Things were allowed 
at critical periods to go as they would, and the promising 
beginning of a national unity was broken into a hundred 
fragments. 

In the case of Italy one can hardly lament the failure 
of the Italian people to form a truly national government 
as he does that of the Germans. Had such a government 
been formed it would undoubtedly have saved the Ital- 
ians much political misery and tyranny, and very likely 
it would have made them a larger and a stronger state 
than they are to-day. But if it had been done either 
by the earlier Lombard kings or by some of the local 
nobles at the fall of Charlemagne's empire, Italy would 
probably have failed of the peculiar glories of her his- 
tory; the stimulating rivalries of the little municipal 
republics in the latter half of the middle ages would have 
been lacking, and the great results which seem to be in such 
close dependence upon these would have occurred more 
slowly, and very possibly in some other part of Europe. 

In France the new family which was to take the place 
of the Carolingian formed its power in the neighborhood 
of Paris. From an unknown ancestor it rose into promi- 
nence very rapidly in the ninth century by the qualities 
which everywhere gave success in those times. 1 Its mem- 

1 The later tradition, referred to by Dante, Purgatorio, XX, 52, that the 
Capetians were descended from a butcher of Paris, has no historical foun- 
dation, but it illustrates in a striking way the popular recognition of the 



AFTER CHARLEMAGNE 1 79 

bers were good fighters and were able to protect their 
dependants. Its lands rapidly increased until they 
touched the Loire, and it went quickly up the ladder 
of feudal rank until finally a duchy was formed and the 
head of the family became duke of the French. No other 
of the local powers which had formed themselves in 
France was as strong as this one, though it was not rela- 
tively so much stronger than the others as the Saxon 
power was in Germany. 

When Charles the Fat was deposed, the first attempt 
was made to transfer the crown to the new family, and 
Duke Eudes, or Odo, was made king in 888. But he 
was recognized only by a small part of France, and a 
Carolingian king was set up against him. For one hun- 
dred years the royal title passed back and forth between 
the two houses, neither having a secure hold upon it, 
though during far the larger part of the century the Caro- 
lingians were the recognized kings. Finally Duke Hugh 
the Great added the skill of the statesman and diplo- 
matist to the warrior skill of his ancestors, and greatly 
strengthened and extended the influence of his house. 
His son, Hugh Capet, was elected king on the death of 
the Carolingian Louis V, in 987, and though Charles of 
Lorraine, who continued the Carolingian line, offered 
resistance, he was able to gain no general support, and 
the Capetian family secured final possession of the throne. 

In the election of Hugh Capet it is probable that a 
conscious national feeling — a realization of the distinc- 
tion of race and language — was less directly a factor than 
in the corresponding revolution in Germany. But the 
conditions which had been making France different from 
Germany were the conditions which had undermined the 
power of the Carolingian family and given the Capetian 

fact that men from the lowest station were founding feudal families of high 
rank in the ninth century as a consequence of their personal bravery and 
their skill as leaders. 



180 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

family its position of superiority, and the substitution of 
the new family for the old upon the throne made it easy 
for the resulting differences to intensify and perpetuate 
themselves. France was becoming thoroughly feudal. 
It was the native land of the feudal system, and there 
that system had developed earliest and most completely. 
This new feudalism was especially strong towards the 
West. The Capetian was the most powerful of all the 
feudal families. The Carolingians represented an old 
power above feudalism. They clung closely to the East, 
the primitive seat of their power. The revolution in 
France meant the accession to power of the new and ac- 
tive forces which were to shape the future, in place of 
the old which had done their work, and one of the most 
important and direct results of their action, under the 
native dynasty thus placed in power, was by degrees the 
growth of a national consciousness, from the slight germ 
which existed at the beginning. 

The real power which the first Capetians exercised as 
kings was, however, very slight. The whole of France 
was covered with feudal dominions like the duchy of 
France, some of them as strong, if not stronger, than their 
own. Normandy, Champagne, Burgundy, and Aquitaine 
were only the largest of a network of local principalities 
which occupied the whole territory and shut out the king 
from all direct contact with land or people. 

The duchy of France was the source from which the 
Capetians drew their actual power, and, managed with 
skill, this was enough to form a solid foundation on which 
to build a more general authority. The national church, 
with its influence and its resources, was of enormous aid 
to them, and it was of no slight assistance to them also 
that they had on their side the theory of the kingship 
and of the prerogatives of a strong central government 
which had come down from the earlier Carolingian days. 
These were but shadowy prerogatives, and had no more 



AFTER CHARLEMAGNE l8l 

real value than the great feudal lords might be willing 
to allow them, but they formed a perfectly distinct stand- 
ard towards which every accession of strength by the 
Capetians was an advance. The first four generations 
of the new dynasty did but little more than to secure 
the hold of their family upon the throne, carefully ob- 
taining the recognition of the son in the father's lifetime; 
but they lost nothing, and the way was prepared for a 
steady advance of the royal power from that time on. 

In the setting up of these national governments in 
France and in Germany there are certain features com- 
mon to both cases which are worthy of notice. 

In neither does there seem to have been any strong 
feeling of attachment to the Carolingian house. How 
far one may be justified in reasoning from this is doubt- 
ful, but it would seem that there was in both countries 
at least an unconscious judgment that the Carolingians 
represented a different condition of things from the one 
then present, and a desire to choose a royal house which 
would more perfectly correspond to the new development. 
Certainly in both countries it was a fatal weakness of 
that house that it had formed no local power; that it 
did not have in its hands immediate domains, a duchy 
of its own which would have been strongly devoted to 
it and from which it could have drawn men and resources 
independent of the great feudal nobles. This was the 
corner-stone of the success of the Saxon family in Ger- 
many and of the Capetians in France. If the Carolin- 
gians had been great feudal nobles as well as kings they 
might possibly have held their own. 

In both these states the church, though acting indepen- 
dently, cast its influence in the same direction. In both 
cases, as the power of the Carolingians weakened and the 
subdivisions of the state became practically independent, 
and as there was a feeling manifested that a general gov- 
ernment was not necessary and that the local govern- 



1 8 2 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

ments were really better for the times; in other words, 
when there was an immediate danger of complete disin- 
tegration the church was one of the strongest influences 
in persuading men to continue the national government, 
and in effecting the transfer of the state to the new fam- 
ilies which could give some promise of re-establishing 
a strong rule. And the reason in both cases also was the 
same, the danger which would threaten the general or- 
ganization of the church if the state should fall apart 
into entirely separate fragments. In both cases, too, 
when the transfer had been made, the church, both in 
means and in influence, was one of the greatest resources 
of the new monarchy in its struggle to consolidate the 
state. 

In England the various Saxon kingdoms which were 
established at the time of the conquest had been united 
early in the ninth century under the supremacy of Wes- 
sex. At the end of that century the strong energy and 
wisdom of Alfred — a genius equal to Charlemagne's within 
his narrower kingdom and a character superior to his — 
had laid broad and sound foundations for a national de- 
velopment. The judicial organization of the state was 
improved; the military system was strengthened and 
tested in a long, and in the main successful, war; the old 
and conflicting laws were formed into a new and enlarged 
body of legislation; and learning and literature were 
aided and encouraged by the king's own example. But 
it was a beginning without immediate results. 

England lay directly in the way of the Northmen, and 
their invasion of the island was a veritable settlement 
like those of the earlier Teutonic invasions. Alfred's suc- 
cessors struggled long, but finally in vain, with the diffi- 
culties of the situation, and England was in the end an- 
nexed to the Scandinavian empire of Cnut the Great 
in the first part of the eleventh century. But North- 
men and Saxons were not widely separated in race or 



AFTER CHARLEMAGNE 1 83 

language, and the blending of the two in a single people 
was not difficult. The Saxon monarchy, which was re- 
established in 1042, might easily have developed into the 
later nation, but another element still was to be added 
to the complex English character. 

The Northmen had made one other permanent settle- 
ment besides that in England, in northern France, and 
had formed a little state there early in the tenth cen- 
tury, the duchy of Normandy, feudally dependent upon 
the king of France. There they had quickly lost their 
identity of race and language, and had developed a pe- 
culiar and interesting civilization. On the death of Ed- 
ward the Confessor, the last king of England of the 
Saxon line, William, the duke of Normandy, asserted a 
right to the English crown and speedily made it good 
by force of arms. 

With him came a new invasion of foreigners, to be ab- 
sorbed by a long process into the English people, and 
a century later, with the accession of the Angevin kings, 
came another immigration of the same sort. So that 
even in England, though it had the advantage of the 
continental states, in its smaller size which rendered the 
task of a common government easier, a genuine national 
consciousness was formed only towards the close of the 
middle ages. But with the accession of William, in 
1066, the state took on its external form, as had the 
German and the French states in the preceding century. 

This new government presents, however, at its begin- 
ning a marked contrast to those of the other two coun- 
tries; the feudal system on its political side had not 
grown up in England under the Saxon kings as it had on 
the Continent. The German elements, which were one 
of the sources of feudalism, had developed there into 
institutions which may rightly in some particulars be 
called feudal, but the essential features of the historical 
feudal system were lacking, and no powerful baronage 



184 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

had been formed standing between the English people 
and the state, and exercising by right or by usurpation 
the royal prerogatives. The Continental political feudal 
system was introduced into England by the Conqueror, 
but it was not the ordinary feudalism of Europe. It was 
feudalism of the type which prevailed in Normandy, 
highly centralized and serving as the machinery of gov- 
ernment under a sovereign who remained the most pow- 
erful factor in the state. Following a practice which had 
been universal in the early days of feudalism, and which 
had not fallen out of use in the duchy of Normandy, he 
claimed the superior allegiance, enforced by an oath, of 
the vassals of every lord. The lands which he granted to 
his followers were scattered about, probably more from 
local conditions than by intention, in such a way that 
they could in few cases be consolidated into little states 
within the state, and with his gifts of land he did not 
grant away royal prerogatives. He retained also, as the 
direct royal domains, much larger territories than he 
granted to any vassal. 

The results were decisive. Feudalism was gradually 
introduced into England, and after a time, in the legal 
theory, the feudal principles came to control all land- 
holding, but there never grew up in England any such 
political system as on the Continent. The king was at 
the very outset the strongest power in the state, and the 
period in English history which is most nearly that of 
an absolute monarchy is that of her Norman and first 
Angevin kings. 

In Spain, as in Italy, there was nothing correspond- 
ing to a national government, but for a different reason. 
The old German kingdom of the Visigoths had fallen in 
the eighth century before the Saracen invasion. In the 
ninth century a row of Christian states began to form 
across the northern edge of the country, partly from the 
refugees who had saved themselves in the mountains of 



AFTER CHARLEMAGNE 1 85 

the northwest from submission to the Arabs and partly 
from the Frankish counties in Charlemagne's Spanish 
territory. By the middle of the eleventh century the 
kingdoms of Leon, Castile, Navarre, Aragon, and Barce- 
lona had taken shape, and had begun the double process 
of pushing the Arabs farther and farther towards the 
south and of uniting with one another. Both these proc- 
esses go on through all the remainder of medieval his- 
tory, and, indeed, it is a fact which had important polit- 
ical consequences in modern history that the people of 
Spain were not united in a common national feeling even 
at the beginning of the sixteenth century. 

We have, then, as the outcome of this period, a foun- 
dation laid for the later national development in the 
leading countries of Europe, each with its own peculiar 
features. Let us compare briefly the state of things that 
existed in the eleventh century with the situation in each 
of the three great states — England, France, and Germany 
— just after the opening of modern history, say in the 
seventeenth century, and we shall readily find the key to 
the inner political history of these countries during the in- 
tervening centuries. 

In Germany, at the beginning of the eleventh century, 
the royal power, if not absolute or undisputed, was strong. 
The most essential steps had been taken towards consoli- 
dating the state and destroying the tendencies towards 
local independence, and there was every promise that 
the process would go on to complete success. In the 
seventeenth century we find the central power reduced 
to a mere name, with none of the characteristics what- 
ever of a national government, and the territory occu- 
pied by the nation split up into hundreds of little states, 
to all intents and purposes entirely independent. In the 
time between these two dates something must have 
greatly weakened the royal power and allowed the dis- 
ruptive forces, which the Saxon kings had apparently 



1 86 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

overcome, to act again and to bring about their natural 
results — results much more extreme indeed and more 
disastrous for the nation than those which were threat- 
ened at the beginning by the revival of the old tribal 
spirit. 

In France, in the eleventh century, the royal power 
was hardly more than a mere theory, and the country 
was broken up into numerous fragments which were 
practically almost as independent as those of modern 
Germany. In the France of the seventeenth century we 
find, on the other hand, an almost ideal centralization. 
Every function of the general government and almost 
every one of local government is exercised by Louis XIV, 
and scarcely a vestige is left of any constitutional check 
upon his irresponsible will. The intervening history must 
have been one of continuous centralization. The kings 
must have been able to destroy completely the feudal 
system, to force the nobles into obedience, and to re- 
cover without exception the prerogatives which they had 
usurped. French history must be the history of the for- 
mation of a real national government out of a feudal 
chaos. 

When we examine English history in the seventeenth 
century we find the kings engaged in a final struggle to 
preserve the last relics of that absolutism which the 
Norman kings had exercised without a check, and that 
century does not close until they had virtually confessed 
defeat, and the real management of the state had passed 
into the hands of a legislative assembly representing 
both nobles and people — an assembly strongly aristocratic 
in its spirit and composition, but started already, as is 
plainly to be seen, in the direction of a more democratic 
government. English domestic history during these cen- 
turies must have been very different from either French 
or German. In some way a virtual alliance must have 
been brought about between the nobles — so much weaker 



AFTER CHARLEMAGNE 1 87 

at the start than the king — and the representatives of a 
strong middle class, and together they must have carried 
on the work of limiting the royal power and of finding 
out constitutional checks upon the exercise of the king's 
prerogatives which should gradually transfer the real con- 
trol of affairs to themselves. 

The later medieval history of Germany is the history 
of the destruction of a promising national organization; 
of France, the history of the construction of a complete 
absolutism; of England, the history of the formation of 
a constitutionally limited monarchy. 

The movement towards nation formation which follows 
the breaking up of Charlemagne's empire was only a 
slight and vaguely conscious beginning, but it was a be- 
ginning clearly and definitely, and of the very greatest 
interest. The importance of the step in advance which 
was taken when the nation came finally into conscious 
existence, as a result of the movement which begins in 
the ninth century, cannot be stated in words nor in any 
way measured. The whole of civilization was lifted at 
once by that step to a higher plane. \ As in the opening 
age of civilization of which history tells us anything — 
not by inference backward but by record — the unit was 
the family, and later the tribe was formed by a union 
of families, and later still the city state by a coalition of 
tribes, and all ancient history centred about the strife of 
city state with city state, until one such city had grown 
into a great empire in which all city and race lines were 
obliterated in one vast unity which was neither city 
state nor yet nation, so by the end of the middle ages 
another stage in this line of progress was reached, and in 
modern times the unit of all political and public life 
and the acting force in what we call " international' ' 
politics has been the nation — not the state, nor the gov- 
ernment, but the living organism which expresses itself 



1 88 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

through the state — a higher organism than any which 
had existed in the classical world. 1 v It may be char- 
acterized as a community of persons' naving a common 
language and race feeling, common interests, aspirations, 
and history, and occupying a definite territory in which 
city and country are indistinguishably blended, and feel- 
ing itself a fully independent and equal member of a 
larger system of things, once Christendom, "now perhaps 
the whole world. One of the most profound forces of 
modern times made its way into history with the gradual 
formation -of this idea, and the broadening of all thought 
and the stimulating of all activities which accompanied it. 

1 If we could venture to put any trust in the apparently regular and nat- 
ural character of this progress, the next step logically would seem to be the 
formation of some kind of an international federation, or possibly even a 
world state. It would not be difficult to point out at least a few tendencies 
of the present time which seem to point in the direction of such a result — 
a possibility which the Anglo-Saxon race, though seemingly in the best 
position to realize it, does not appear to recognize, certainly not so con- 
sciously as some other races do. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 1 

Out of the fragments of the Carolingian empire the 
modern nations were finally to arise. But there was in 
the meantime, as we have seen, a considerable period, 
after the fall of the old government, before any real na- 
tional governments, at all corresponding to the modern 
idea, came into existence. This is the period when the 
feudal system was the prevailing form of political organi- 
f zation. 

In any detailed history of civilization it would be 
necessary to give much space to the feudal system, both 
because of the large field which it occupies in the polit- 
ical life- of the middle ages, and also because it is one 
of the most influential of medieval institutions, the source 
of legal principles and social ideas, which are, even now, 
by no means obsolete. 

1 Some portions of this chapter are a more detailed statement of the facts 
than is ordinarily the case in this book because there is as yet in English 
no fully satisfactory account either of the origin or of the final character 
of feudalism. The author's article "Feudalism" in the eleventh edition of 
the Encyclopedia Britannica is closely parallel to this chapter and also a 
summary account, but it treats of several points more fully. It has not 
seemed best in a book of this kind to attempt any account of feudal prac- 
tices in detail. It should be noticed that the word "system" is used in the 
phrase "feudal system" for convenience merely and with no intention of 
conveying the meaning "systematic." In regard to the character of com- 
pleted feudalism, the contribution made by the feudal law to national sys- 
tems of law was so great that a somewhat more accurate knowledge of feudal 
practices was preserved, and the accounts of these matters given in such 
books, for example, as Hallam's Middle Ages and Guizot's History of Civiliza- 
tion in France are more nearly in agreement with the facts, though needing 
modification in many ways, than what these authors have to say of the 
origin of the system. 

189 



190 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

The question of the origin of the feudal system is one 
of the most difficult in all institutional history, for one 
reason, because it took its rise in ages which have left 
us very scanty historical material, and for another, be- 
cause it originated in the domain of extra-legal and pri- 
vate operations, and under the influence of forces which 
leave but slight traces of their working. Every impor- 
tant point in this history has been the subject of long 
and violent controversy, and is so still, though to a less 
extent. It may be said that opinion is now practically 
united upon the main points in the history of political 
feudalism, and that present differences concern minor 
points of detail, or the amount of emphasis which shall 
be placed upon certain facts. 

Before entering upon the details of the origin of the 
feudal system, there is one general consideration which 
has an important bearing upon the study which should 
be made clear. It is necessary here, and in all institu- 
tional history, to distinguish very carefully between two 
sets of causes or antecedents. First, there is the general 
cause, or the prevailing condition of things in the society 
of the time, which renders a new institution necessary; 
and, second, there is the old institution, on which the pre- 
vailing cause seizes, and which it transforms into a new 
one. Both these are always present. No institution ever 
starts into life wholly new. Every new institution has 
its foundation far in the past in some earlier one. The 
prevailing necessity transforms it into a new institu- 
tion, but the character of the new creation is as much 
conditioned by the character of the old as it is by the 
new necessity which it is made to meet. The sneer which 
is sometimes heard against that sort of investigation 
which seeks the foundations of a new institution in those 
which have preceded it, as merely antiquarian, is proof 
only of a very narrow conception of history. 

The application of this consideration to the present 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 191 

case becomes clear enough when the problem before us 
is specifically stated. What we have to do is not to ac- 
count for the rise of feudal forms in general, but to ac- 
count for that peculiar feudal system, which arose in 
western Europe in the middle ages. It is undoubtedly 
true that institutions have existed in Japan, and in Cen- 
tral Africa, and in various Mohammedan states, almost 
everywhere, indeed, which are justly called feudal. It is 
true that under certain political conditions human nature 
turns, naturally as it would seem, to forms of govern- 
ment which are feudal. And it is necessary to take these 
political and social conditions into account in our study 
of the problem more fully than has been done, perhaps, 
by some merely institutional historians. They are among 
the most essential causes at work. But when taken alone 
they merely account for the rise of feudal forms in gen- 
eral. They give us no reason for the fact that in insti- 
tutional details these various feudal systems differ from 
one another in essential particulars. To explain this fact 
we must turn to the earlier institutional foundation on 
which in each case the social forces built. 

By "the feudal system," when used without qualifica- 
tion, we always mean the system of medieval western 
Europe, and in accounting for its origin we have two 
sets of facts to consider — the condition of society which 
gave such forms an opportunity to develop, and the ear- 
lier institutions which were transformed by these social 
and economic conditions into the historical feudal system, 
and which determined the form assumed by many of the 
special features of that system. 

By "the feudal system" again we commonly mean, as 
we should, the entire organization of society from top to 
bottom. In studying it, therefore, we have constantly 
to remember that this organization was a two-sided one. 
There had been more or less closely combined in it two 
distinct groups of practices and institutions which were 



192 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

in their origin independent of one another, which had 
grown up to meet different needs, and which remained 
to the end clearly distinguished by contemporaries and 
easily distinguishable by us. Described in the most gen- 
eral terms, one side was the feudal organization of gov- 
ernment, and the other was the feudal organization of 
agriculture. In the case of both alike, development of 
the original beginnings had been induced by the same 
general condition of things in the middle and later em- 
pire, the decay of the ancient civilization, political and 
economic. On one side political influences were especially 
active; certain earlier legal practices were seized upon 
and developed into institutions practically new in order 
to furnish to the free man locally the protection which 
the general government was no longer able to give. On 
the other side the economic were the chief influences, 
and institutions which had for their object to secure 
compulsorily the necessary cultivation of the soil were 
developed and added to existing institutions. The former 
gave rise to what we more often mean when we speak 
of feudalism, the latter to what we may call, using a 
term more frequent in England than elsewhere, the ma- 
norial system. Logically, historically, and legally, there 
was no necessary connection between these two sides of 
feudalism. There need have been no actual connection. 
Either side might become highly developed with prac- 
tically no, or an imperfect, development of the other, as 
did economic feudalism in the Anglo-Saxon states. In 
the actual situation, however, both earlier and later, the 
vast importance of agriculture as the chief source of 
wealth and the chief support of life made it inevitable 
that, where political feudalism was at all developed, it 
should enter into a partnership with economic feudalism. 
It is of great importance to remember that their union 
was never more than a partnership. They never were 
amalgamated into one, but the two sides remained dis- 
tinct and distinguishable so long as they existed. 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 1 93 

It does not accord with the general purpose of this 
book to undertake a detailed account of the rise of the 
manorial system or description of its final character. 
These things are to be sought in the special field of eco- 
nomic history. Here it will suffice to say that the manorial 
system was created by taking as a beginning the Roman 
system of organizing the cultivation of a great estate 
as a unit, managed from a common centre, the villa, and 
adding to it the practice of attaching the agricultural 
laborer to the soil so that he could not leave it himself 
or be removed from it by the landlord. This practice 
created the serf class, and by combining it with the great 
estate cultivated as a unit, the manor was created. So 
simple a statement, however, does not dispose of all the 
difficulties of this development, nor was the manorial 
system, even where independent of feudalism proper, 
quite so completely divorced from all results that may 
be called political, as this would seem to imply. Espe- 
cially is it necessary to notice one development inti- 
mately connected with the rise of the manor which re- 
sults in many cases in the transfer to the lord of the 
manor of a responsibility which is political, and normally 
the function of the state. 

In the simplest terms, which nevertheless describe ac- 
curately the general process, this transfer came about 
in the following way: The Roman master had over his 
slaves the power of life and death and of all minor 
punishment: The state assumed no responsibility in re- 
gard to the misdemeanors and crimes of the slave. As 
the slave was transformed into the serf, still unfree, the 
master's responsibility in these matters continued the 
same. But as the serf had been granted certain limited 
rights, a definite piece of land, the temporary possession 
of some personal property, disputes between them over 
these things, which would be of the nature of civil, not 
criminal, cases would arise. These also fell to the lord's 
decision. Here is the germ of a jurisdiction and a court, 



194 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

which very likely in the beginning did not extend over 
free men. As by degrees, however, partly from economic 
and partly from political reasons, free men began to be 
included within the manorial organization, it was inevi- 
table that disputes between them and other members of 
the same community should fall into the lord's court. 
The state in its weakness was probably not unwilling 
that his responsibility should also extend itself at least 
to some of the criminal acts of free men. It is only nec- 
essary to suppose that the manor in time became identical 
in extent with the territorial jurisdiction of some local 
public court, the town or the hundred, to see how easy 
it would be to take a further step and to identify, by 
royal grant or private usurpation, the local public court 
of that territory with the private court which had grown 
up in the manor. 

This process was greatly aided by the fact that both 
the general government and the landlord looked upon the 
administration of local justice largely as a source of reve- 
nue. Fees and fines, which in those days were paid in 
every case, were considered no insignificant additions to 
public or private income. It was evidently the economic 
consideration which was the chief one in this transfer, 
but the effect was to a considerable extent political. What 
is really a function of local government had passed into 
private hands, in many cases quite independently of the 
other general transformation which was going on at the 
same time of the functions of the central government into 
private possession in the rise of political feudalism proper. 
Where this transfer took place the local court, if it was 
that of a small political unit like the town, was often 
united with the manorial court, so that the two became 
practically one. If it was that of a larger unit like the 
hundred, the public court often continued distinct though 
in private hands. Whether united or distinct, however, 
the two jurisdictions, the manorial and the local public, 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 1 95 

were in almost all cases distinguishable from one another, 
and seem to have been so distinguished by contempora- 
ries. The manorial jurisdiction proper remained a feature 
of economic feudalism so long as that system survived, 
and indeed in some countries it continued long after politi- 
cal feudalism proper had disappeared and local jurisdic- 
tion been fully resumed by the state. In this form it 
came to be transferred to some of the American colonies 
like Maryland. 

The political feudal system proper, with which we have 
chiefly to deal, came into existence in the eighth and 
ninth centuries, owing to the disorders of the time, and 
the inability of the central government — even of so strong 
a government as Charlemagne's — to do its necessary work 
without some such help. It is itself a crude and barba- 
rous form of government in which the political organiza- 
tion is based on the tenure of land; that is, the public 
duties and obligations which ordinarily the citizen owes 
to the state, are turned into private and personal services 
which he owes to his lord in return for land which he has 
received from him. The state no longer depends upon 
its citizens, as citizens, for the fulfilment of public duties, 
but it depends upon a certain few to perform specified 
duties, which they owe as vassals of the king, and these 
in turn depend upon their vassals for services, which will 
enable them to meet their own obligations towards the 
king. The services rendered in this way were not re- 
garded in the feudal age as an economic return for the 
land, and all ranks obtained their necessary income from 
other sources, chiefly from the economic side of feudal- 
ism, that is, the manorial organization. 

There are always present in this political feudal sys- 
tem two elements which seem very closely united together, 
but which are really distinct, and to be kept apart from 
one another in mind if we are to understand the origin of 
the system. They were distinct in origin and early his- 



196 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

tory and were brought together only in the middle period 
of feudal growth. One of these relates wholly to land 
and the tenure by which it is held. This land element is 
the "benefice" or "fief." The other is the personal rela- 
tion, tHe"'br5nd of mutual fidelity and protection which 
binds together the grades in the feudal hierarchy. This 
personal element is the relation of lord and vassal. In 
the ideal feudal system these two elements are always 
united, the vassal always receives a fief, the fief is al- 
ways held by a vassal. In practice they were sometimes 
separated, and in some countries such a separation was 
recognized by the feudal law. There are, then, these two 
specific questions concerning the origin of the feudal sys- 
tem: How did these two institutions, vassalage and the 
benefice, come into existence and become united; and 
how did public duties, for example military service, get 
attached to them, and become changed in this way into 
private services which one paid as a form of land rent? 

When we come to trace the origin of these two insti- 
tutions we find that we are carried back to the time of 
political insecurity when the Roman Empire was falling 
to pieces, just before and at the moment of the German 
invasions. Then began the conditions which called these 
institutions into existence, and which, continuing in the 
main unchanged through the whole period, transformed 
them into the perfected feudal system. 

As the real power which the Roman emperor had at 
his command declined, his ability to protect the citizens 
and preserve order in the outlying provinces became 
less and less. The peace and security which Rome had 
formerly established could no longer be maintained, and 
the provinces fell a prey to various disorders. Usurp- 
ing emperors, peasants in insurrection, revolted troops, 
bands of invading Germans, marauders of all sorts ap- 
peared everywhere, and the state could not hold them 
in check. But the individual must obtain protection at 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 197 

some price. If he owns land, he will need protection in 
order to cultivate it and enjoy the returns; if he has no 
land, he will still need protection for his life and his 
means of livelihood. If he cannot get it from the state 
he must seek it where he can find it. In such political 
conditions there always arises a class of men strong 
enough from wealth or position or abilities to give some 
degree of protection to weaker men. The weaker men 
take refuge with the stronger and increase their power, 
which thus grows into a little semi-detached fragment of 
the state, and the germ of the feudal system has come 
into existence. 

In the later Roman Empire, under the influence of 
these conditions, two practices arose which we need to 
notice. One of them related to land, the other to per- 
sons owning no land. In the case of the first, the small 
landowner, long at an economic disadvantage, and now, 
in the midst of the crowding evils of the time, threat- 
ened with total destruction, gave up his land to some large 
landowner near him, whose position was strong enough 
to command or compel respect from vagrant enemies, 
and received it back from him to cultivate, no longer as 
owner, but as a tenant at will. As the form of tenure to 
be used in such cases, a peculiar kind of lease which had 
been known to the Roman law as the precarium received 
a great extension in practice. Under this form the owner 
granted the use of a piece of property to another, with- 
out rent and with no period of time specified, but with 
the right to call it back at will. 1 This was the kind of 

x The language of the Digest both illustrates this point and suggests 
the way in which benefice came to take the place of precarium as the tech- 
nical word. It says, XLIII, 26, 14, "Interdictum de precariis merito 
introductum est, quia nulla eo nomine juris civilis actio esset; magis enim 
ad donationes et beneficii causam, quam ad negotii contracti spectat pre- 
carii condicio." This means that a case concerning a precarium does not 
have the same standing in the courts as an ordinary business transaction, 
because a grant in this form is not so much a matter of business as of gift 
or to confer a benefit. 



198 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

tenure by which the small landholder held and cultivated 
the land which he had been obliged to surrender to some 
strong man for fear of losing it entirely. He lost the 
ownership of it; he held it only so long as his lord might 
please, but his actual condition was much improved. In 
the growing scarcity of laborers he was not likely to be 
disturbed in his tenure, and he had now an armed force 
which could be depended on to keep off all marauders 
not actually armies, and he had a right to take refuge in 
his lord's fortress on some not distant hilltop when a 
more serious invasion threatened. 

The other practice was adopted to meet the case of 
the freeman who owned no land, and it gave rise to an 
institution closely resembling, possibly derived from, the 
clientele which Caesar describes as prevailing in Gaul at the 
time of his conquest, and not unlike the earlier Roman 
institution of patron and client. The dependant is often 
called a client in the language of the time, and the insti- 
tution itself the patrocinium. In a case of this sort the 
poor freeman goes to the rich and strong man who can 
afford him protection, and explaining that he can no 
longer care for or support himself, begs to be taken under 
his protection and furnished with shelter and support. 
The rich man grants the petition, adds the client to his 
household, and expects from him, in return, such services 
as a freeman may perform. There seems to have been 
no specified services, nor peculiar duty of fidelity in this 
arrangement, but its obligations were probably clearly 
enough defined in the customary law which all under- 
stood. In this way many local magnates of the age of 
the invasion collected about them considerable forces, 
composed also partly of armed slaves and serfs, and so 
added greatly to their own power, and furnished the lo- 
cality with some degree of security. In some instances, 
both in the East and in the West, we know that such 
private forces amounted to respectable armies and served 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 1 99 

to protect extensive territories, or even to turn the march 
of an invading tribe. 

It is important to notice that, in the case of the free- 
man entering into either of these relations, the personal 
one or the one relating to land, there was no loss of polit- 
ical status or personal freedom. The dependant, under 
the new arrangement, remained, in either relation, ex- 
actly what he had been before, both in reference to his 
duties to the government and his personal rights. 

It was of course true, as the history of the Roman tax 
system makes evident, that the rich man might be so 
strong in his district that he could refuse to meet his 
obligations towards the government, and set the local 
officers at defiance, and so be able to protect from the 
burdens of the state the poorer men who became his 
clients and dependants. He could also protect them 
from the not infrequent abuse of power by officials. 
These were, no doubt, reasons for the rapid extension of 
these practices. But if he interfered with the real rights 
of the government, it was an illegal usurpation, not a 
recognized change in the status or duties of his depen- 
dents. That such results did follow is clear enough from 
the attitude of the state towards these practices, which 
it pronounced illegal and forbade under the heaviest pen- 
alties. But it was powerless to interfere, and even the 
death penalty had no effect to check them. Indeed, if 
the state had been strong enough to stop them, it would 
have been strong enough to have preserved such general 
security that no necessity for such customs would ever 
have arisen. 

The results, as seen at the time of the invasions, have 
many features in common with the later feudal system, 
and it is right, in the sense mentioned at the beginning 
of the chapter, to speak of them as feudal, but they are 
still far from being the historical feudal system. 

In the first place, the characteristic feature of the later 



200 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

feudalism was lacking. These two practices remained 
entirely distinct from one another. They were not yet 
united into a single institution. The personal relation, 
or clientship, did not imply at all the reception of land, 
and holding land by the precarium tenure involved no 
obligation of service. 

In the second place, there was no common organiza- 
tion, either expressed or implied, as there was in the 
completed feudal system, between the various local 
powers which had been formed. They were merely pri- 
vate and wholly separate fragments into which the state 
had fallen. In other words, there was not enough con- 
nection between them, taken alone, to have preserved 
the state, as a state, through a period of political chaos, 
but they would have produced a thousand little local 
states wholly independent and sovereign. 

In the third place, the state regarded these institutions 
not merely as unconstitutional and improper for itself, 
but also as illegal and improper for private citizens. The 
local potentate might actually have usurped, as we know 
he did, many of the functions of the state, judicial as 
well as military, and have excluded the state practically 
from his whole territory and taken its place himself, but 
this was a usurpation and strictly forbidden by the laws. 
In the later feudal system the similar practices are not 
merely recognized by the government as legal, but they 
are even, in some cases, enjoined as duties, and become, 
in practice at least, the very constitution of the state, so 
that in many cases the sovereignty exercised by the feudal 
baron over his territory was the only sovereignty exer- 
cised by the state. 

The Franks, when they entered Gaul, found these 
customs prevailing there, as in all the provinces of the 
empire. They dealt with them, as they did with many 
Roman institutions which they found; they allowed them 
to continue in use and they adopted them themselves. 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 201 

It was under the conditions which prevailed in the Frank- 
ish kingdom, and by means of the legal expedients adopted 
by the Frankish kings, that these primitive beginnings 
were developed into the feudal system of Europe. 

The conquest was indeed a most serious crisis in the 
history of feudalism. Had they been disposed to do so, 
the Frankish kings would doubtless have found it easier 
than the Roman emperors had done to crush out these 
institutions, still in a formative condition, and to estab- 
lish a centralization, if not more complete in theory, cer- 
tainly more so in fact. The government which they did 
found had many of the features of an absolutism incom- 
patible with the continued growth of these institutions. 
If they had destroyed them, and entirely prevented their 
further growth, their government would have escaped its 
most dangerous enemy of the future — the one to which 
it was finally compelled to surrender. But the more 
simple political mind of the Frank could not perceive 
this danger so clearly as the Roman did, and another fact 
was an even more decisive influence against any change. 
The Franks themselves had institutions and practices 
which were so similar to those of the Romans that it was 
the most natural thing imaginable for them to adopt these, 
and to regard them at once, as they had never before 
been regarded, as perfectly legal, because the correspond- 
ing German institutions were. 1 The German customs 
and the Roman customs ran rapidly together into a 
common practice, and the German variations from the 
Roman added very essential elements of their own to the 
common product, so that the feudal system presents one 
of the clearest cases that we have of the union of the Ger- 

1 Various theories have been advanced to account for this apparently 
extraordinary short-sightedness on the part of the Frankish kings, both 
Merovingian and Carolingian. The fact that the Germans had similar 
customs, which they had always considered not merely as legal, but as 
highly commendable, especially the comitatus, would seem to be sufficient 
to account for the changed attitude of the state. 



202 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

man and the Roman factors together to form new in- 
stitutions. 

The most striking of these German institutions was 
the comitatus, which we have briefly described in the 
chapter on the German invasions. The old theory that 
the feudal system was created by the settlement of the 
comitatus band upon the conquered soil is now abandoned, 1 
but its place has been taken by a clear recognition of 
the very important contribution which the comitatus 
made to the final result. The institution was one corre- 
sponding very closely to the Roman client system which 
we have described above. It was a purely personal rela- 
tionship of mutual protection, service, and support, be- 
tween a chief and certain men, usually young men of the 
tribe, voluntarily entered into on both sides. But it had 
certain distinctive features of its own, which are lacking 
in the Roman institution, but characteristic of the later 
feudalism. It was not regarded by the Germans as a 
mere business transaction of give and take, but was 
looked upon as conferring especial honor on lord and 
man alike. It was entered upon by a special ceremonial, 
and sanctioned by a solemn oath, and the bond of per- 
sonal fidelity established by it was considered to be of 
the most sacred and binding character. All these ideas 

x The most important point concerning the origin of feudalism about 
which scholars disagree is the relation of vassalage to the early German 
comitatus. Professor Heinrich Brunner of Berlin and some who follow him 
maintain that the form of vassalage which united with the benefice to create 
the full feudal relationship was derived directly from the comitatus. Against 
this view the arguments of Fustel de Coulanges, Waitz, and Dahn seem 
conclusive. Especially valuable is Dahn's summary of the whole case in 
Die Koenige der Germanen, VIII, 2, 151-171, with full references. It will 
be found, I think, that those who derive vassalage from the comitatus hold 
that identity of practical result, identity of function, determines institu- 
tional identity. If this is true, if institutional differences are not structural 
differences, and organic differences, then they are of little importance and 
not worth the trouble it costs the historian to investigate and establish 
them. A good corrective of such a frame of mind can be found in study- 
ing the scientific reasons for the change in botany from the Linnaean sys- 
tem of classification to that which obtains to-day. 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 203 

and customs passed from the comitatus into the feudal 
system. 

The Roman practices in the patrocinium, which the 
Franks found in Gaul, seemed to them, therefore, very 
natural and proper, and they adopted them at once, inter- 
preting them according to their own ideas. It seems evi- 
dent also, as the Franks became settled upon the land and 
the members of the original royal comitatus came to have 
private interests and landed possessions which made it 
difficult for them to fulfil the duties of the old relation, 
or to be used for its purposes, that their place was taken 
by persons who had entered into a personal relation to 
the king, corresponding, both in motive and in form, 
rather to the late Roman patrocinium than to the Ger- 
man comitatus. So that the institution which survived 
in the new state was the Roman rather than the German, 
which must necessarily have disappeared in the decidedly 
changed conditions of the national life, but it was the 
Roman essentially modified by ideas and usages from 
the German. 

It was some little time after the conquest, so far as 
the documents allow us to judge, before the Celtic word 
vassus began to be employed for the man in this personal 
relation. Originally applied to servants not free, it came 
into gradual use for the free clients, and thus acquired 
from the comitatus idea a distinctly honorable meaning. 

In reference to the land relationship, which we have 
described, it has been conclusively shown, in opposition 
to earlier theories, that the Frankish kings, following na- 
tive German ideas, did probably from the beginning make 
donations of land, which carried only a limited right of 
ownership, and which fell back in certain contingencies 
to the donor. 1 Such practices would make it easy for 
the Franks to understand and adopt the Roman practice 

1 Brunner, Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie, 1885, p. 1173, and 
in his Forschungen, pp. 1-39. 



204 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

of the precarium, and it appears to have been so adopted, 
quite extensively, by German private landowners who 
found themselves in a similar position to the Roman, 
and to have been continued also as before, by Roman 
subjects of the Frankish state. But still, to all appear- 
ances, it was not adopted in any really important way by 
the kings, until the beginning of the Carolingian period, 
and the chief agent in carrying over the precaria, as the 
word came to be written, from the Roman to the German 
state, seems to have been the church. 

The church appears to have used this tenure very ex- 
tensively under the empire, both as a means of increas- 
ing its territories — the donor retaining the use of his 
grant for life — and also as a convenient way of bestow- 
ing upon persons, whose support or favor it desired to 
secure, land which it could not alienate. It seems to 
have introduced a small rent-charge, as a sign of owner- 
ship, and to have fixed more exactly the limit of such 
grants to a specified time, commonly five years, or the 
lifetime of the recipient. These practices it continued 
in very frequent use under the Frankish kingdom. 

Through the Merovingian period of Frankish history, 
therefore, these institutions remained in very much the 
same shape in which they were under the empire, except 
that they were not now regarded as illegal. It is in the 
Carolingian period that they took the next great steps 
in their development — the steps that were essentially 
necessary to the formation of the historical feudal system. 
They then became united as the two sides of a single 
institution, and they were adopted by the government 
as a means of securing the performance of their public 
duties by the subjects of the state. The simplest ex- 
ample of this process is the transformation of the citi- 
zen army into a feudal army, and this gives us also, in 
its main features, the history of the joining together of 
the benefice and vassalage. 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 205 

Originally neither of these primitive Roman institu- 
tions had, as it would seem, any especially military char- 
acter. And this is, with an insignificant modification, as 
true of the Merovingian as of the Roman period. In 
such troubled times, however, as those which brought 
these institutions into use, military service would cer- 
tainly be one of the most frequent services needed from 
such dependants, and apparently some of them at least 
were constantly employed as an armed force, but there 
was, during the earlier period, no necessary connection 
of this military service with these relationships either 
of person or of land. The first beginnings of this con- 
nection were made at the opening of the Carolingian age 
under Charles Martel; the completion of it — the estab- 
lishment of military service as the almost indispensable 
rule in feudalism — was hardly accomplished before the 
period ends. 

The occasion which led to the beginning of this change 
was the Arabian attack on Gaul, and the necessity of 
forming a cavalry force to meet it. 1 Originally the 
Franks had fought on foot. But the Arabs were on 
horseback, and their sudden raids, which continued in 
south Gaul long after the battle of Tours, could not be 
properly met, and the defeated enemy properly pursued, 
without the use of horse. But this was putting a heavy 
burden of expense on the citizen, who armed and sup- 
ported himself, and who was already severely oppressed 
by the conditions of the service. The state must aid 
him to bear it. This it could do only by grants of land. 

The first Carolingian princes had, however, but scanty 
resources in this direction. The royal domains had been 
exhausted under the Merovingian kings. Their own house 
possessions, though very extensive, would not go far to- 

1 See Brunner, Der Reiterdienst und die Anfange des Lehnwesens, in the 
Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fiir Rechtsgeschichte, Germanistische Abtheil- 
ung, vol. VIII, 1-38; also in his Forschungen, pp. 39-74. 



206 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

wards meeting the needs of a family, gradually usurp- 
ing the royal power, and so in need of means to purchase 
faithful support. They lay, besides, in Austrasia, at a 
distance from the country which was in especial need of 
defence. There was in the case but one resource open 
— the extensive lands of the church, amounting, in some 
parts of the kingdom, to one-third of the territory. 

It had long been the custom for the state to make use 
of church lands, a bit here and there, to meet some spe- 
cial need; but now, in the face of this great necessity, 
there was, seemingly, a more extensive confiscation, for 
which Charles M artel secured an evil place in the mem- 
ory of the church. It was not, however, a confiscation in 
form, and his successors succeeded in making a definite 
arrangement with the church, regulating and sanction- 
ing, in a limited way, . this use of church lands. The 
precaricE furnished a convenient tenure for the purpose. 
By it the ownership of the church was, in form, pre- 
served by the payment of a small fee, while the use of 
the land passed to the appointee of the king. These 
grants became technically known in the church records, 
during this brief transitional period, as precaricz verbo regis , 
grants made at the royal command. As the object was 
to maintain a cavalry force, the prince bestowed these 
grants of land upon his vassals who were bound to him 
by a personal bond of especial fidelity and service, and 
who were to be enabled, by the additional income secured 
them by the grant, to furnish mounted soldiers to the 
army. They divided the land among their own vassals 
upon the same terms. It was at this time also that the 
word " benefice " came into gradual use for the land granted. 

In this way the first steps were taken towards uniting 
these two institutions into a single one, and towards in- 
troducing the special obligation of military service as a 
condition on which the land was held. But it must not be 
understood that the process was by any means completed 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 207 

as yet. It was a very slow and a very gradual change, 
extending throughout the whole Carolingian period. 

The efforts which were made by Charlemagne to re- 
form, or rather to enforce, the military system of the 
kingdom, had a very important influence in the same 
direction. With the growth in size of the Frankish Em- 
pire, requiring campaigns at such great distances and 
almost constantly, their original military system of un- 
paid service from all the freemen, which was common 
to all the German tribes, had come to be a serious burden 
upon the Franks. Indeed, the poorer citizens, who could 
no longer bear it, were striving to escape from it in every 
possible way, and the armies threatened to disappear. 
This danger Charlemagne tried to overcome by a series 
of enactments. He allowed several of the poorer free- 
men to unite in arming and maintaining one of their 
number in the army. He directed that vassals of pri- 
vate individuals must perform military service as the 
vassals of the king did, thus trying to hold to their duty 
those who had sought to escape from it by such an ar- 
rangement. He also ordained that the lord should be 
held responsible for the equipment and appearance in 
the field of his vassals, or should pay the fine for their 
failure to appear. Finally, when these measures proved 
of no avail, he issued an ordinance which apparently 
brought a great principle of human nature to his aid by 
allowing the vassals to come into the field under the 
command of their lords instead of with the general levy 
of the country under the count. The natural desire 
of the lord for influence and consideration would make 
him wish to appear at the head of as large and fine a 
body of vassals as possible, and the expedient seems to 
have proved successful enough to be adopted regularly 
in the generations following. But the result of it was 
to make the army more and more completely a feudal 
army, though it seems certain that the freemen who re- 



208 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

mained throughout the whole feudal period holders of 
land and free laborers in considerable numbers outside 
the feudal system, were never excused from military 
duty, and were summoned occasionally to actual service. 
Still the state in the main depended no longer upon citi- 
zens for its army, but upon vassals who served as a duty 
growing out of their holding of land. 

In this way one important duty of the citizen, that of 
defending the community, was transformed from a public 
obligation into a matter of private contract, and became 
one of the ordinary conditions upon which lands were held. 

A like transformation took place during this same time 
in regard to other functions of the state — the judicial, for 
example — which also passed into the hands of private 
individuals and became attached to the land. Thus the 
great fiefs came to possess what the French feudal law 
called "justice"— -jurisdictio — that is, full sovereignty, so 
that the state was practically excluded from all contact 
with any persons residing within the limits of the fief, 
a result which went far beyond any development of ma- 
norial justice. The process by which this transformation 
was accomplished, in respect to the other functions of the 
state, is by no means so clear as it is in the case of the 
military. In the instance, for example, of the judicial 
power of the state, there is probably no subject con- 
nected with the origin of the feudal system which is still 
the subject of so much controversy, and on which so 
many varying views are still maintained, as upon the 
way in which this power passed into private hands. 

The process was undoubtedly largely aided by the 
"immunities." These were grants of privilege to churches 
or to private individuals, by virtue of which the ordi- 
nary officers of the state were forbidden all entry upon the 
specified domain, and the owner took the place of the 
officers in reference to the state. This did not at once 
remove these estates from the control of the government. 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 209 

The landowner became independent of the ordinary of- 
ficers, but not of the state, whose officer he became for 
his own land, though often possessing, instead of the 
state, the entire judicial revenue, but it did undoubtedly 
favor the development of private jurisdiction and virtual 
independence, and probably in many cases fully accounts 
for the sovereignty of the fief. The government, which 
found it so difficult during this time to control its own 
officers and to keep the functions of the state in opera- 
tion by their means, would often find it entirely im- 
possible to prevent the great landowner who had received 
a grant of immunity from throwing off all dependence 
upon the government and setting up a state of his own. 

In the case of many fiefs, however, no immunity ex- 
isted, and the process must have been a different one. 
Our knowledge of what it actually was is so slight that 
almost every one of the various theories which have been 
advanced to explain it has some reasonable foundation, 
but the probability is that in the majority of cases it was, 
in reality, a usurpation. 

The holder of the fief was locally strong. He could 
and did maintain some real degree of order and security. 
It was by virtue of this fact that his power had been de- 
veloped and continued to be obeyed. In theory the 
state was absolute. It was supposed to control almost 
every detail of fife. And this theory of the power of the 
state continued to exist and to be recognized in the days 
of the most complete feudalism. But actually the state 
could do nothing. Its real power was at the opposite 
extreme from its theoretical. The conditions which had 
favored the development of those germs of feudalism 
which existed under the later empire, even where their 
growth had been in the interval held in check, tended 
to reappear after the fall of the Carolingian power. 
The great difficulty of intercommunication rendered it 
impossible for the state to bring its authority into di- 



2IO MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

rect contact with all parts of the country. It had no 
strong and organized body of officers on whom it could 
depend. Every officer, military or administrative, was 
a local magnate doing his best to throw off the con- 
trol of the state, and using his official position to aid 
him in this purpose. There was no strong feeling of 
unity among the people which it could call to its aid. 
There were no common feelings or ideas or interests which 
bound the dweller at the mouth of the Loire to the dweller 
at the mouth of the Seine. Patriotism and a common 
national feeling were wanting. Everything was local and 
personal. Even in the church was this the case in the 
tenth century, Europe at large hardly knowing who was 
pope in Rome, and the common organization almost 
falling to pieces, while in Rome itself the papacy sank 
to its lowest point of degradation, a prey to local faction 
and made to serve local interests. If this was true of 
the church, much more was it true of the state, which 
had no such general organization and no such basis of 
common feelings. The sovereign of the moment had 
only such an amount of power as he might derive from 
lands directly in his hands, that is, from his own local 
fief. The great advantage which the first Capetians had 
over their Carolingian rivals was, as we have seen, that 
they had a very strong local power of this sort, while the 
Carolingians had really none; but even this power which 
the first Capetians had was not enough to enable them to 
exercise the functions of a real government within the 
other large fiefs. Certainly there was no such power in 
the hands of the later Carolingians. These functions, 
which the government was powerless to exercise, fell nat- 
urally into the hands of the local magnate and were 
exercised by him. 

Sometimes it was a real usurpation, the baron assum- 
ing and continuing offices which the state should have 
discharged. More often, no doubt, it was a transforma- 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 211 

tion of duties which the state had once lodged in his 
hands, as an immunity, perhaps, or in making him its 
own administrative officer, duke or count, a transforma- 
tion of such a sort that the baron no longer performed 
these functions as a representative of the state, but by 
virtue of his own property right, and the persons living 
within his domain, fulfilled these duties, no longer as 
obligations due to the state, but as personal duties due 
to their immediate lord. Among these there would usu- 
ally be vassals of his whose ancestors had dwelt in the 
county when his ancestors were counts by the king's 
appointment, and really represented the government. 
In those days they had attended the count's court as 
citizens discharging a public duty. In every intervening 
generation the same court had been held and attended, 
undergoing no pronounced change at any one time. But 
in the end it had been entirely transformed, and in at- 
tending it now the descendants of the earlier citizens 
were meeting a private obligation into which they had 
entered as vassals of a lord. 

The local public court, no doubt, in being thus trans- 
formed into a private court, by the usurpation of the 
baron or by the grant of the king, retained its funda- 
mental principles unchanged. The vassals came together 
to form the court, as formerly the citizens had done, 
accompanied by such free citizens of the district as might 
still remain outside the vassal relations. They made the 
judgment of the court by common consent, as had the 
earlier Teutonic court, and they adopted, by general 
agreement, measures of the character of local legislation, 
as the older local assembly had done whose place they 
had taken. But, in relation to the public authority of 
the state, the transformation was a great one, and the 
whole point of view had been changed. 1 

*A local public court, particularly of the smaller territorial units, un- 
doubtedly in some cases passed into private possession through a develop- 



212 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

The geographical extent of territory, subject in this way 
to the lord's " justice," would depend upon a great va- 
riety of circumstances largely peculiar to each case; cer- 
tainly it depended, only in the most remote way, upon 
any act of the nominal sovereign's. The most decisive 
of these circumstances would be the personal ability of 
the successive generations of lords, their success in pre- 
serving some considerable amount of order and security, 
and making their government really respected over a 
larger or smaller area, and their success in compelling 
outlying landholders of less strength to recognize their 
supremacy. If they were good organizers and strong 
fighters, especially the last, their lands were constantly 
enlarging, until they reached the boundaries of other 
territories which had been formed in the same way. If 
they were undecided and weak, their subjects and their 
rivals took speedy advantage of it. Vassals lost no op- 
portunity to throw off their dependence and assume for 
themselves the rights of sovereignty, and neighboring 
great barons did not hesitate to entice or to force a rival's 
vassals to change their allegiance, and thus to enlarge 
their own lands at their rival's expense. When the feudal 
system and the feudal law became more definitely fixed, 
these things became less frequent, but they never entirely 
ceased, and the days of formative feudalism were times 
when the law of the survival of the fittest reigned su- 
preme. 

As the starting-point of such a feudal territory there 
was often, not a fief, but an estate of allodial land, that 
is, land which the original owner had held in fee simple 
and not as a benefice from some lord. There was always 
present in feudal times, also, a strong tendency to turn 

ment of manorial jurisdiction as described above, though in such a transfer 
the immunity was often not without influence. A third kind of court, the 
feudal proper, composed of vassals primarily and acting upon feudal ques- 
tions chiefly, further complicates the judicial situation. In an account 
which is considering general political conditions it may be disregarded. 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 213 

benefices into allodial land, that is, for the vassal to 
throw off all semblance of dependence upon his lord, and 
become independent, acknowledging in many cases not 
even a theoretical dependence upon any one, the state 
itself included. Such allodial lands, of whatever origin, 
might be just as thoroughly feudal in their internal organ- 
ization as any other, and, if large enough, always were, 
that is, they were subdivided among vassals, and gov- 
erned and regulated according to feudal principles, but 
the feudal law generally recognized their independence 
of outside control. Examples of such lands are those 
which the German feudal law styled "sun fiefs," fiefs 
held of the sun, and, in France, those of a part of the 
counts and others who styled themselves "counts by the 
grace of God." In many cases pretensions of this sort 
were not made good against the growing strength of the 
government; in others they were, and the little states 
were distinctly recognized by the general government 
as independent sovereignties. The little kingdom of 
Yvetot, whose memory has been preserved in literature, 
is the case of a fief which became independent, and 
the little territory of Boisbelle-Henrichemont, in central 
France, maintained a recognized independence until 1766, 
when the last seigneur sold his state to the king. 

In general, from the tenth to the beginning at least of 
the thirteenth century, the political aspect of western 
Europe was thoroughly feudal, and even in those parts 
of the country where allodial lands largely predominated, 
as, for example, in central France, the state was as weak 
as elsewhere, and the real government as completely 
local. The small allodial proprietor, not strong enough 
to usurp for himself the right of "justice," was subject 
to the "justice" of the feudal lord of the locality, and 
sometimes even to the payment of dues that were dis- 
tinctly feudal, though he might not be forced into the 
position of a full vassal. 



214 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

We have endeavored to present in this sketch, as fully 
as possible in the space at our command, the rise of the 
feudal system. Comparatively insignificant practices, of 
private and illegal origin, which had arisen in the later 
Roman Empire, and which were continued in the early 
Frankish kingdom, had been developed, under the pres- 
sure of public need, into a great political organization ex- 
tending over the whole West, and virtually supplanting 
the national government. The public need which had 
made this development necessary was the need of secu- 
rity and protection. Men had been obliged to take refuge 
in the feudal castle, because the power of the state had 
broken down. This breakdown of the state, its failure 
to discharge its ordinary functions, was not so much due 
to a lack of personal ability on the part of the king, as to 
the circumstances of the time, and to the inability of 
the ruling race as a whole to rise above them. The dif- 
ficulty of intercommunication, the breakdown of the old 
military and judicial organization, partly on account of 
this difficulty, thus depriving the state of its two hands, 
the lack of general ideas and common feelings and in- 
terests, seen for example in the scanty commerce of the 
time, the almost total absence, in a word, of all the 
sources from which every government must draw its fife 
and strength, this general condition of society was the 
controlling force which created the feudal system. The 
Germans, in succeeding to the empire of Rome, had in- 
herited a task which was as yet too great for the most 
of them, Merovingian and Carolingian alike. Only by a 
long process of experience and education were they to 
succeed in understanding its problems and mastering its 
difficulties. This is only saying in a new form what we 
have before said in other connections, that the coming in 
of the Germans must of necessity have been followed by 
a temporary decline of civilization. This was just as true 
of government and political order as of everything else, and 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 215 

the feudal system is merely, in politics, what the miracle 
lives and scholasticism are in literature and science. 

These last paragraphs have, perhaps, given some idea 
of the condition of things in the completely feudalized 
state, and of the character of feudalism as a political or- 
ganization. 

The perfected form which the lawyers finally gave to 
the feudal theory as a matter of land law and of social 
rank is undoubtedly the source of the popular idea that 
the feudal system was a much more definitely arranged 
and systematized organization than it ever was in prac- 
tice. Among us Blackstone's Commentaries are proba- 
bly, more than any other single source, responsible for 
this impression, as they are for other ideas of history 
which are not altogether correct. He says, speaking of 
the introduction of feudalism as a result of the Norman 
conquest: 

"This new polity therefore seems not to have been im- 
posed by the conqueror, but nationally and freely adopted 
by the general assembly of the whole realm, in the same 
manner as other nations of Europe had before adopted 
it, upon the same principle of self-security, and, in par- 
ticular, they had the recent example of the French na- 
tion before their eyes, which had gradually surrendered 
up all its allodial or free lands into the king's hands, who 
restored them to the owners as a beneficium or feud, to 
be held to them and such of their heirs as they previously 
nominated to the king, and thus by degrees all the allo- 
dial estates in France were converted into feuds, and 
the freemen became the vassals of the crown. The only 
difference between this change of tenure in France and 
that in England, was, that the former was effected grad- 
ually, by the consent of private persons; the latter was 
done all at once, all over England, by the common con- 
sent of the nation." 



2l6 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

It is needless to say that no such facts as these ever 
occurred, either in France or in England, but the lawyers 
certainly did form such a theory as this of the feudal 
state, and from its influence came the popular notion of 
what sort of an organization the feudal state was. 

According to this theory the king is vested with the 
ownership of all the soil of the kingdom. But, like the 
private owner of a vast estate, he cannot cultivate it all 
under his own immediate direction. On the other hand, 
he has certain great expenses to meet, and public func- 
tions to perform, by virtue of his position as the head 
of the state. He must provide for defence against the 
national enemies, he must determine and enforce the 
laws, provide a currency, maintain the highways, and so 
on. The resources to enable him to meet these obliga- 
tions must be derived from the land of the kingdom 
which he owns. Accordingly he parcels out the kingdom 
into a certain number of large divisions, each of which 
he grants to a single man, who gives a peculiarly binding 
promise to assume a certain specified portion of these 
public obligations in return for the land which is granted 
him. So long as he fulfils these duties he continues to 
hold the lands, and his heirs after him on the same terms. 
If he refuses to meet his obligations, or neglects them, 
the king may resume his lands and grant them to some 
more faithful vassal. Together, these men constitute the 
great barons, or grand feudatories, or peers of the king- 
dom, and by their united services the state gets its busi- 
ness performed. 

In the same way these great barons divide their land 
among vassals, whose united services enable them to 
meet their obligations to the king. These vassals sub- 
divide again, by a like pTocess of "subinfeudation," and 
so on down to the knight's fee, or lowest subdivision of 
the feudal system — a piece of land large enough to sup- 
port and arm a single warrior of noble condition. 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 21 7 

There is, undoubtedly, a general correspondence of 
this theory to the actual facts which prevailed from the 
tenth century on. Public duties were almost wholly 
transformed into private services. The state did depend, 
to a very large extent, upon the holders of land for the 
performance of its functions. The land of the kingdom 
did tend to become feudal, held by vassals upon a ten- 
ure of service, and there was a tendency in the feudal 
system to develop into a hierarchical organization of 
regulated grades, from the king down to the smallest 
noble. 

But not one of these tendencies was completely realized 
in the actual feudalism of any country of Europe, and 
there never was anywhere such a regular organization as 
the theory supposes. It is perfectly easy to see, from the 
way in which the feudal system came into existence, its 
long and slow growth by private arrangements to meet 
local needs, that it could have no settled and uniform 
constitution, even for its general features, and for minor 
details it could have no general system of law with fixed 
, rules which prevailed everywhere. 

Its law must be purely customary law, formed by each 
locality for itself, its rules determined by the local cus- 
toms and usages which had grown into precedents. It 
was not the result of general legislation, indeed it may 
be said that, during. the feudal period proper there was 
scarcely such a thing as formal legislation of the modern 
sort. We have, therefore, no general feudal law, but we 
have a thousand local systems of law, having certain 
general features alike, but differing more or less widely 
from one another on matters of detail. Even such gen- 
eral codes as the Assises de Jerusalem or the Libri Feudo- 
rum are not merely now and then at variance with one 
another on important points, but they are in some re- 
spects theoretical treatises, embodying an ideal law rather 
than stating practices which were widely in force. The 



2l8 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

general use into which some of these codes came in the 
hands of the lawyers, after there began to be professional 
lawyers, tended to create a uniformity of practice which 
had not existed earlier; but this was only from the thir- 
teenth century on, when in most countries feudalism was 
losing its political significance and was passing into a 
mere system of land law and of social rank. 1 

In the days when feudalism was at its height as a 
political organization, the way in which the lord's court 
settled a particular question, or in which private agree- 
ment regulated a particular service, was final, and the 
custom thus formed in the locality became the law for 
that locality. These decisions and regulations might, 
and did, differ greatly in different places. Says Beau- 
manoir, one of the thirteenth-century lawyers, whose 
Coutumes de Beauvaisis became one of the law books in 
general use: " There are not two castellanies in France 
which use the same law in every case." 2 Indeed, it is 
hardly too much to say that there was no uniformity 
of practice even in the most general features of the sys- 
tem. 

There was nowhere any series of great baronies which 
covered the area of a kingdom. 3 The lands held by the 
twelve so-called peers of France by no means made up 
the whole of that country. Some fiefs, not ranked among 
these, were as large or larger, like the county of Anjou 
or the county of Brittany. Some of the peers held only 
a portion of their land of the king. The count of Cham- 

1 The most permanent in influence of all the feudal law books, the Lom- 
bard feudal code, or the Libri Feudorum, reflects in its numerous repeti- 
tions and confused character the local and customary growth of the feudal 
law. It was not made after the usual method of code formation, the cutting 
out of repetitions and superfluous passages. It is not properly a code at 
all, but is a collection of various local customs and of the opinions of law- 
yers brought together by a gradual series of accretions. 

2 Vol. I, p. 14, Ed. Beugnot; I, p. 5, Ed. Salmon. 

3 For an interesting brief statement of conflicting practices in feudalism, 
see the note on p. 213 of the text of Longnon's Atlas Historique de la France. 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 219 

pagne was the king's vassal for only a fraction of his 
lands. His great territory was a complex, brought to- 
gether into a single hand, and held of nine suzerains be- 
sides the king, of seven ecclesiastical lords, the German 
emperor, and the duke of Burgundy. The king granted 
fiefs of every size, and had vassals of every rank and title, 
and many subvassals of others held small fiefs directly 
from the king. In Germany the number of very small 
fiefs held immediately of the emperor was great. Su- 
zerains also, even kings and emperors, held fiefs of their 
own vassals. The same homage, for the same fief, might 
be paid to two lords at the same time, or a fief might be 
held by two or more vassals. Not merely land, but all 
sorts of things having value — offices, tolls, and privileges 
— were made into fiefs, and the variations of form and 
character in fiefs were almost infinite. And yet portions 
of the land in most kingdoms remained allodial, and were 
never held under any actual feudal tenure. 

Gradations of rank in the nobility came to be regular 
and definite in later times, but they were not so when 
feudalism was supreme, and the size or importance of 
the fief by no means determined its title and rank. Vis- 
counts had counts as vassals. Some mere lordships were 
as large as the fiefs held by counts, and for a fief to change 
its title, while remaining the same itself, was of very 
frequent occurrence, as in the case of the county of Brit- 
tany which became a duchy. 

In general, we may say that the feudal system was 
confusion roughly organized, and it would be impossible 
within these limits, even if our plan permitted, to give 
any satisfactory idea of its details. It is doubtful if it 
would be possible, within any reasonable limits, to give 
a detailed account of feudal usages which would not con- 
vey a wrong impression, or which would be true of more 
than limited regions. 

Besides these differences of detail, the national feudal 



2 20 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

systems, which took shape in the different countries of 
Europe, differed more or less widely from one another 
in many points of general constitution. The history of 
feudalism runs a different course in the various states, 
and the permanent influence which it exercised on na- 
tional institutions and history is distinct for each, as will 
be evident when the formation of the modern nations is 
reached. 

It is clear that a system of this sort would be a seri- 
ous obstacle to the reconstruction of a strong and consoli- 
dated state. It is a fact still more familiar to us that 
the legal and social privileges, the shadow of a once dom- 
inant feudalism, which the state allowed to remain or 
was forced to tolerate, secured for it a universal popular 
hatred and condemnation. But these facts ought not 
to obscure for us the great work which fell to the share 
of feudalism in the general development of civilization. 
The preceding account should have given some indica- 
tion, at least, of what this work was. The feudal castle, 
torn to pieces by the infuriated mob of revolted peasants, 
as the shelter of tyrannous privileges, was originally built 
by the willing and anxious labor of their ancestors as 
their only refuge from worse evils than the lord's op- 
pression. 

We have seen, earlier, the great danger which threat- 
ened the political unity which Rome had established in 
the West in consequence of the German invasions; how 
they threatened to break up the Western Empire into 
separate and unconnected fragments; and how the in- 
fluence of the church and of the idea of Rome availed 
to keep up some general consciousness of unity, and of 
a common whole to which they all belonged. But these 
influences, however strong in maintaining an ideal union 
of states, could hardly be of much value within the bounds 
of the separate states. The same causes of separation, 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 221 

however, were at work there. There were so few com- 
mon bonds between them that it was as hard for the in- 
habitants of the different parts of Gaul to keep alive any 
real feeling of national unity, as it was for them to realize 
any common relationship with the men of Italy. As the 
central governments of the different states succumbed 
more and more to the difficulties of their situation, and 
became more and more powerless to exercise any actual 
control at a distance from the court, the danger was 
great and real that the state would fall apart into little 
fragments owning no common allegiance, and that the 
advanced political organization which civilization had 
reached would dissolve again into the original elements 
from which it had formerly been constructed — that Gaul, 
for example, would revert to the condition from which 
the Romans had rescued it. From this danger Europe 
was saved by the feudal system. 

Feudalism is a form of political organization which 
allows the state to separate into as minute fragments 
as it will, virtually independent of one another and of 
the state, without the total destruction of its own life 
with which such an experience would seem to threaten 
every general government. 

When we look at the actual condition of things in a 
feudal state, its anarchy and confusion, we can hardly 
see how it would be possible for disintegration to go far- 
ther, or the destruction of the government of the state 
to be more complete. And yet there is an enormous 
difference between a society which has thrown off all 
common bonds, and actually broken into fragments that 
are wholly isolated, and another in which, however frag- 
mentary in appearance, a lively and constantly recog- 
nized theory keeps in remembrance the rights and pre- 
rogatives of the central government, and asserts without 
ceasing that there is a vital bond of union between all 
the fragments. 



2 22 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

It was this that feudalism did. It was an arrange- 
ment suited to crude and barbarous times, by which an 
advanced political organization belonging to a more or- 
derly civilization might be carried through such times 
without destruction, though unsuited to them, and likely 
to perish if left to its own resources. There is no inten- 
tion of asserting in this proposition that such a system is 
ideally the best way to accomplish this result, or that 
it could not have been done, perhaps with less time and 
expense, by some other expedient, but only that this is 
what it did do historically, and possibly further that the 
general history of the world shows it to be a natural 
method in similar cases. 

The phrase of Hegel, that the feudal system was a 
protest of barbarism against barbarism, and that of 
Henri Martin, that it concealed in its bosom the weapons 
with which it would be itself one day smitten, are strictly 
accurate. 1 It kept alive the theory of the state, with the 
king at its head, in the possession of almost absolute 
rights and prerogatives. 

And this was never completely reduced to the condi- 
tion of a mere theory; for themselves the kings seem 
never to have recognized, in the worst days, the claims 
to independence which the great nobles advanced, and 
many circumstances — accident, the rivalry of one baron 
with another, the dying out of a line, a dispute between 
vassal and lord — presented opportunities for interference 
of which even the weakest kings availed themselves, and 
so added to theory something in the way of actual fact. 

1 Is this a characteristic of every phase in the political development of 
the race? I translate the following suggestive sentence of M. Monod's 
from the Revue Historique, vol. XLIII, p. 95: "As we can follow through 
the feudal epoch the development of the monarchical idea which was to 
destroy feudalism, and as we can follow across the monarchical epoch the 
development of the national idea which was to throw dynastic interests 
back into the second place, so we can follow across the history of the last 
two centuries the development of economic and industrial interests, the 
social idea, which is destined to overthrow the national." 



THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 223 

When we reach the point where there was the most com- 
plete recognition by the kings of feudal law and privi- 
leges, in the thirteenth century, we are already at the 
time when they were seriously undermining the feudal 
power. 1 The work of doing this, and of recreating a 
central authority, was merely the process of putting into 
actual exercise prerogatives which feudalism had con- 
tinued to recognize as existing, though not allowing in 
action. It was simply the successful effort to turn the- 
ories into facts. 

Feudalism had hardly reached its height, and drawn 
all society into its forms, when conditions began to pre- 
vail which made it possible for a general government to 
exist for the whole state, and to make its power felt and 
obeyed in distant localities. The moment that these 
conditions came into existence, feudalism as a political 
system, and a substitute for a central government, began 
to decline. As once all things had conspired together to 
build it up when it was needed, so now, because its work 
was done, all things united to pull it down. The history 
of its fall is the history of the formation of the modern 
nations. 

1 Germany occupies, as will be seen later, a peculiar position in this re- 
spect, and there feudalism was not overthrown, as far as the national gov- 
ernment is concerned, but reached its logical conclusion and destroyed the 
state. But this was not due to any conscious yielding to feudalism on the 
part of the sovereign, nor to any peculiar effort to realize in facts the feudal 
theory, but entirely to outside influences which prevented the kings from 
accomplishing what should have been their natural work, together with a 
survival of original tribal feeling not found elsewhere. 



CHAPTER X 

THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 

At a time when the feudal system was at its height, 
that is, when there was great separation and local inde- 
pendence, and when the universal and the common had 
very little power, the minds of many men were strongly 
held by two theories, so general and comprehensive in 
character, that it seems impossible that they should 
have existed at such a time. And yet they were con- 
sciously held by some, unconsciously by almost all. 
These were the theories of the Holy Catholic Church, and 
of the Holy Roman Empire. 

These theories had their foundation, as we have seen, 
in ideas which had grown up in pagan Rome — the ideas 
of the divinely ordained, eternal, and universal empire. 
These ideas the Christians adopted. We find traces of 
them in Christian writers from the first half of the third 
century on. They found in them an interpretation for 
prophecies of the Old Testament. But they modified 
them, also, in consequence of the new point of view from 
which they regarded them. For the Christian the polit- 
ical work of Rome was not its great work — not the ul- 
timate end for which it had been founded. This was to 
be found in the establishment of Christianity. God had 
allowed the universal and eternal political empire of 
Rome to be created, that in it might be formed the uni- 
versal church, the true Civitas Dei of St. Augustine. 

There were, then, in the plan of God for history, these 
two final organizations, distinct in sphere, the universal 
political organization, and the universal religious organ- 

224 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 225 

ization. The one was realized in facts by the Roman 
Empire; the other by the Catholic church; and as the 
actual course of history favored the continuance or the 
revival of the empire, and the more and more definite 
and perfect organization of the church government, the 
theories which they expressed grew in definiteness and 
in their hold upon men. They seemed to constitute the 
permanent plan of God for history, and these two powers 
seemed to stand as the representatives of his government 
of the world. The pope represented God, was his vicar, 
his vicegerent, in his religious government of mankind, 
the emperor in his political. 

In the case of the ecclesiastical organization the facts 
correspond somewhat closely to the theory. There was 
such an empire, extending, not throughout the whole 
of Christendom, but throughout the whole of orthodox 
Christendom, which was to the mind of that time much 
the same thing. The whole Western world was united 
under a single head in one great religious state. To the 
other part of the theory the facts did not correspond so 
well. The. political empire had a direct authority only 
in Germany and in Italy, though it cherished wider pre- 
tensions, and though these pretensions were not without 
some recognition outside those countries, a recognition, 
however, mainly theoretical. There was, certainly, in 
both cases a strong enough foundation in fact to lead 
an ambitious man, at the head of either of these organi- 
zations, to desire, and attempt to gain, a more extended 
realization of the theory. 

As to the relation of these two governments to one an- 
other, the dividing line between these two empires, there 
was no definite idea. Each laid claim to the very highest 
and widest rights. Neither could exercise his power in 
full, as he understood it, without involving the subjection 
of the other. Each had historical facts to appeal to, 
which seemed to imply the exercise of these rights in 



226 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

their widest extent, and the submission of the rival power 
to them. But neither had a clear case against the other, 
and neither was willing to acknowledge any inferiority. 

In such a situation a conflict was inevitable. As soon 
as there should come to the head of either church or em- 
pire an able and energetic man, determined to push his 
claims, there was certain to be a great contest, if there 
was at the head of the opposing system, not necessarily 
equal ability, but only determined resistance. This gives 
us the elements of that fierce conflict, which plays so 
large a part in the middle portion of medieval history — 
the conflict between the papacy and the empire. It be- 
gins a short time before the first crusade, and extends 
through the whole period of the crusades, but with a 
gradually changing character, so that in its last period it 
is quite different, in motive and purpose, from its open- 
ing stages. 

The history of the empire we have followed some- 
what fully down to this point, through its revival by 
Charlemagne as a general empire of the West, and its 
second revival by Otto I as a German and Italian em- 
pire. The history of the church we have not looked at 
with the same fulness. 

In the chapter on the early papacy we followed its 
history down to a point where most of the causes which 
were to transform it into an imperial church were already 
plainly at work. That period of its history closes nat- 
urally with the reign of Gregory I, at the end of the 
sixth century, the greatest of all the early popes./** He 
defended the supremacy of the Roman church against 
the pretensions of the Greek empire and the Greek church. 
He became in consequence of the weakness of the East- 
ern emperor the virtual temporal sovereign of Rome and 
the surrounding territory. He held in check the advance 
of the Lombards, increased the actual power of the Roman 
church in face of the Arianism of Spain and Gaul, re- 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 227 

formed abuses with unsparing hand, converted the Saxon 
kingdoms and brought England into close union with the 
papacy, and by the vigor of his rule and the success with 
which he made it respected in every quarter he greatly 
strengthened the position of the church. 

But the future was full of danger. It was of the ut- 
most importance in the development of the monarchical 
church that a reign of such vigor and success, and one 
which carried the organization so far forward should 
have come just at the time when it did — on the eve of a 
long period of extremely unfavorable conditions, and 
even of acute danger. All the prestige and increased 
strength which Gregory's reign had imparted were needed 
to preserve the centralization which had been gained, 
and to prevent the absorption of the church in the state. 
The vigorous but irregular advance of the Lombard state, 
which threatened the absorption of the whole Italian 
peninsula, was a grave danger to the papacy. Its posi- 
tion as a world power was as seriously threatened by the 
wide-spread Arianism of the German states of the west, 
the Lombards, the Burgundians, and the Visigoths in 
Gaul and Spain. From these dangers it was saved by 
the alliance with the Franks, which was first formed by 
Clovis and afterwards made still closer and more effec- 
tive by the early Carolingian princes. The importance 
of that alliance we have already noticed, but it is hardly 
possible to overstate its influence on the future. If on 
the one side it rendered easy the formation of the Frank- 
ish empire, the political consolidation for a time of nearly 
the whole of Christendom, and the incorporation in it of 
Germany, on the other side it seems as if without it the 
medieval church would have been impossible and all its 
vast work for civilization left to be far more slowly per- 
formed by some other agency. Had the Franks become 
Arian instead of Catholic, the prestige and power of the 
pope must have declined, the causes which gradually led 



228 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

to the conversion of the Arian states could hardly have 
operated, and though the Franks might have widened 
their political dominions, they could have received no 
aid from an imperial church, and there could have been 
no ready channel for the influence of the Roman ideas 
which they reproduced. 

While this alliance was begun upon the political side, 
and chiefly from political motives, it was drawn still 
more close and rendered permanent upon the ecclesiasti- 
cal side by the work of a great churchman, St. Boniface, 
whose name must be remembered among the construc- 
tive statesmen who created the papal monarchy. Time 
as well as genius favored his work, for it fell in a form- 
ative period of the utmost importance, the middle of 
the eighth century, when the great future possible for 
them in the political world was just opening before the 
Carolingians, and when, if ever, the hold of the church 
upon their empire must be secured. This Boniface did. 
He was by birth an Anglo-Saxon, and so trained in those 
ideas of thorough devotion to the pope which had been 
characteristic of the English church since its founding 
under Gregory, even though the Anglo-Saxon states had 
allowed to the popes but little direct control of ecclesi- 
astical affairs. In this respect his labors upon the Conti- 
nent were a renewal and enlargement of Gregory's work 
for the consolidation of the church. Filled with the mis- 
sionary zeal of his great predecessor, which had always 
lived in the Anglo-Saxon church, he had come from Eng- 
land to convert the still pagan Germans, but the force of 
his genius had drawn him into ever wider and more im- 
portant work. After a time the organization of the 
Frankish church, which was in sad need of reformation, 
was placed in his hands by the sons of Charles Martel, 
and by the pope that of the German church in the newly 
converted lands held under the Franks. 

This work was most ably done. The Frankish church 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 229 

was given a more compact organization than it had ever 
before possessed, and the church of Germany was created. 
But more important still was the wider influence of this 
work, for in all its details he carried into practice a 
theory most complete, considering the time, of the su- 
premacy of the pope as the head of the whole church 
and the source of all authority. As a result, just at the 
moment when the Frankish kings were about to become 
the temporal sovereigns of the pope with a political power 
behind them which could not be gainsaid, not merely was 
the national church of their people given a stronger and 
more independent organization as a part of the state, but 
it was also imbued with the idea of the high and exalted 
position held by the pope, almost if not quite equal to 
that of the king. The princes under whom he worked, 
and their successor, Charlemagne, still exercised a strong 
and direct control over the church, but that these facts 
had some influence in checking their arbitrary rule in 
ecclesiastical matters is highly probable. That they were 
of decided force under their weaker successors is more dis- 
tinctly evident, and the suddenness with which the church 
springs into prominence and control as soon as the strong 
hand of Charlemagne is withdrawn is a most significant 
fact. 

The consolidation of the Continent in the hands of 
Charlemagne was a great advantage to the growing im- 
perial church by giving it for the moment a political 
foundation, but it carried with it a corresponding danger. 
The advance of the Lombard had threatened to absorb 
the papacy in the state and to reduce it to the headship 
of a merely national church. From this it was rescued 
by the advance of the Franks, but that now threatened 
an equally complete absorption. A man of Charle- 
magne's force must dictate in ecclesiastical matters as 
in temporal, and had his power and genius been per- 
petuated in his successors it is hard to see what could 



23O MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

have saved the popes from sinking into a position like 
that of the patriarchs of Constantinople, and the real 
control of the church from passing into the hands of the 
emperors. 

One precedent, however, of the utmost importance had 
been established in favor of the papacy by the crowning 
of Charlemagne as emperor of Rome. Whatever it may 
have meant to the men of 800, it was very easy to make 
it appear to the men of later times a bestowal of the 
empire by the gift of the church and a proof that the 
pope was the source of imperial right and power. The 
church never forgot a precedent of this sort, and it did 
effective service in the age of conflict upon which we are 
entering. 

Whatever might have been the fate of the church had 
Charlemagne's genius been inherited, the fact is that his 
successor was as greatly characterized by subserviency 
to the church as his father had been by vigorous self-will, 
and the ninth century, when the government of the 
state was daily growing weaker, and the whole Frankish 
empire falling to pieces is marked in the history of the 
church by the rapid growth of the power actually exer- 
cised by the popes, and the still more rapid growth of 
their pretensions to power. 

At a time about contemporary with Charlemagne two 
most remarkable forgeries made their appearance, whose 
origin and the purpose for which they were originally 
intended are uncertain, but which became of the greatest 
service to the papal cause. The first of these in time was 
the so-called Donation of Cons tan tine, appearing probably 
in the third quarter of the eighth century. According to 
the legend, Constantine, fatally ill of the leprosy, was 
cured by a miracle through the agency of Pope Sylvester 
I, and out of gratitude built a new capital in the East 
and turned over by deed of gift all his imperial rights and 
prerogatives over the West to the pope. The document 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 23 1 

purporting to make this grant had every appearance of 
genuineness to the uncritical sense of the ninth century. 
It was not merely general but minute in its specifications, 
concerning even matters of dress and regulating the rights 
of the inferior clergy of Rome. 1 It is easy to see what 
advantage could be derived from it in the contest with 
the emperors. 

The other forgery was a great collection of ecclesias- 
tical law documents, appearing just after the middle of 
the ninth century and pretending to be decretals of the 
popes of the first three centuries and decisions of the 
councils in which genuine and false, authentic and unau- 
thentic were mingled together. A collection of such doc- 
uments, not forged, had been made, earlier in Spain and 
had come into considerable use in the church, and this 
new collection became confused with that, and the name 
of Isidore of Seville, of great authority in the church, 
was attached to it. It was, however, greatly enlarged 
in scope over its predecessors. Whatever may have been 
the place of its construction, probably somewhere in 
northern France, it seems to have had in view at least as 
one of its immediate objects to defend the independence 
of the bishop against the claims of the archbishop. In the 
West the only rival of the papal power had been the metro- 
politan jurisdictions. The temptation had been very 
strong for the archbishop to consolidate his power over 
his subordinate bishops and to create a little independent 
ecclesiastical dominion by resisting, as far as he could, 
every attempt on the part of the pope to exercise control 
over him. In a rivalry of this sort the bishops very natu- 
rally preferred the distant and more widely occupied au- 
thority of the pope to that of the archbishop near at hand, 

1 There is a translation of this deed of gift in Henderson's Select Historical 
Documents of the Middle Ages. The document itself probably intended to 
grant imperial rights only over Italy and its islands, but the historical 
interpretation was that given above. 



232 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

and immediately interested in every local affair. This 
seems the more likely motive which led the author of this 
forgery in a series of documents belonging, in pretence, to 
the earliest generations of Christian history, to exhibit the 
papacy in the full possession and exercise of those rights 
of government over the church, and of interference even 
in minute local concerns which had been in reality only 
very slowly developed, and which were still practically 
claimed rather than exercised. But whatever may have 
been the motive, the effect was to put into the hands of 
the popes documentary evidence whose genuineness no 
one was then able to dispute, to prove that the rights 
which they were just then vigorously asserting had al- 
ways been their prerogative, and had been recognized 
and submitted to by the primitive church. 

Hardly were these two documents in existence when a 
succession of able men followed one another upon the 
papal throne to put to use both these and the opportu- 
nity which the falling Carolingian government afforded 
them. The first of them, Nicholas I, in his reign of 
nearly ten years, from 858 to 867, carried through to suc- 
cessful issue an obstinate struggle with Lothaire II, King 
of Lorraine, and compelled the archbishop of Ravenna, 
and finally Hincmar of Rheims, the ablest of all the rep- 
resentatives of the archbishops' cause against the papacy, 
to yield obedience. The next two popes, Hadrian II and 
John VIII, covering fifteen years of time, were not able to 
accomplish as much in the way of actual results, but they 
assumed an even loftier tone and advanced the claims 
of the papacy to the highest point, John VIII asserting 
that the emperor owed his crown to the pope, while the 
emperor of the time, Charles the Bald, seemed to ac- 
quiesce. 

In the final dissolution of the Carolingian power which 
followed the deposition of Charles the Fat, in 887, the 
papacy shared to the full the decline of the temporal 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 233 

power. The tenth century, which saw general govern- 
ment throughout nearly the whole of Europe almost at 
the point of dissolution, saw also the papacy reach its 
lowest point of degradation and corruption. It came to 
be the prize for which the factions of the city or the 
nobles of the vicinity fought with one another, or the 
gift of corrupt women to their paramours or sons. Its 
general European influence did not entirely disappear, 
but it was hardly more than that of the Italian nobles, 
who through the same period called themselves emperors. 1^ 

This was the condition of things at the time of the 
descent of Otto I from Germany into Italy, in 961. His 
plans, and still more clearly those of his immediate suc- 
cessors, looked to the establishment of a real world em- 
pire, in the government of which the papacy should act 
as a strong and efficient ally of the emperors. The popes 
of their appointment accomplished at least a partial and 
temporary reformation, though without the support of 
the Roman people, and though the realization of the 
ideas which the Ottos appear to have cherished would 
have meant the practical absorption of the papacy in 
the empire. But the destinies were against the Saxon 
family. Otto II hardly more than began his reign, which 
promised even greater results than his father had accom- 
plished in the centralization of Germany and the restora- 
tion of the empire, and his death, at the age of twenty- 
eight, was a great misfortune both for the Holy Roman 
Empire and for Germany. 

The minority of his son, Otto III, was a time of loss 
in all directions. The dukes recovered something of 
their former position in Germany, and the hold of the 
empire on Italy was loosened. When Otto reached an 
age to rule, he revealed a most interesting personality. 
His mind seems to have been entirely wrapped in dreams 
of the widest imperial power, encouraged apparently 
by his favorite, Gerbert, whom he made pope as Syl- 



234 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

vester II. But he was very little concerned with the 
position which he should occupy as German king. He 
gained, very likely as a consequence of his lack of na- 
tional feeling, no strong support in any direction, and 
died at the age of twenty-two, apparently on the eve of 
failure. 

With his death the wide imperial ideas of the Ottos 
were dropped. In Italy there was a relapse into earlier 
conditions. In Germany the work of restoring the royal 
power was seriously taken up, and the most permanent 
result of the Saxon empire seems to have been a terrible 
temptation, constantly before the king in Germany, to 
neglect his proper business in his own dominions, when 
his task was half done, for the sake of a visionary head- 
ship of the world. 

The devotion of the Ottos to imperial interests had al- 
lowed the little feudal dominions in Germany, reinforced 
in some cases by a survival of tribal loyalty, to strengthen 
themselves very greatly, and to take a much more inde- 
pendent position towards the crown. The process of de- 
stroying the central government, by splitting the country 
into minute fragments that could not be controlled, which 
entailed so much suffering in future ages upon the Ger- 
mans, and kept them back so long from any real national 
life, got so strongly under way, because of the imperial 
policy of the Saxon family in Italy, that it was no longer 
possible to stop it — certainly not when that policy was 
inherited as well by the succeeding kings. 

It is of the utmost importance to bear this fact in 
mind, because it not merely involved the destruction of 
the royal power, but it alone rendered possible the des- 
perate conflict with the church, and finally the virtual 
triumph of the pope. Had the emperor been supported 
by a centralized Germany, had not his plans been con- 
stantly checked by the selfish interests of the local powers, 
papal resistance would have been impossible, and the 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 235 

growing might of the Italian cities would have been over- 
whelmed before it could have developed into a serious 
obstacle to the imperial authority. 

The aspect of Germany at the accession of Henry III, 
in 1039, had changed very much from that of a hundred 
years earlier. The older duchies still existed in name, 
but with a relative importance very much reduced by 
the rise of numerous smaller feudal dominions beside 
them. Pfalzgrafen, markgrafen, and even grafen, had 
been founding little "dynasties," and gradually throwing 
off any dependence upon the dukes, whose territories 
were being diminished in this way and their power weak- 
ened. Konrad II, the first Franconian emperor, seems 
to have deliberately encouraged the rise into indepen- 
dence of these smaller principalities, as a means of under- 
mining the great ones, and the policy of the Saxon em- 
perors, of conferring independent rights of jurisdiction 
on ecclesiastical princes, tended to the same result. 1 

The policy was, in the main, a successful one, or we 
may say that the process of separation and local inde- 
pendence had not yet gone so far but that a generation 
of vigorous government, when the king interested himself 
chiefly in German affairs, was able to restore the royal 
power. Henry III was speedily able to acquire the 
strongest real control of Germany that any sovereign 
had had, or that any was to have in the future for that 
matter. 

But he was soon called into Italy. There the condi- 
tion of things for a few years past had been nearly as 
bad as at any time in the tenth century. The counts of 
Tusculum had almost made the papacy hereditary in 

1 The final steps in this process, when the duchies, in the old sense, dis- 
appeared, and numerous smaller principalities rose to full equality with 
the power which the duchies had once held, were taken in the Hohenstaufen 
period. The geography of Germany in that period, as compared with that 
under the Saxon emperors, shows how far this process had gone. Compare 
Maps 22 and 26 in Droysen's Historischer Handatlas. 



236 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

their family, and by the most corrupt means. At this 
time there were three rival popes, each maintaining his 
exclusive right to rule. All of them Henry deposed, and 
appointed, one after another, a succession of popes almost 
as solely by virtue of his imperial power as if the Roman 
bishopric were any minor bishopric of Germany. The 
series of precedents in favor of the right of the emperor 
over the pope which had been established by the Ottos 
and Henry was as clear and indisputable as any prece- 
dents on the other side to which the popes could appeal. 

But with the popes of Henry's appointment a new and 
most powerful force rose to the control of the papacy — 
a strong and earnest movement for reformation which 
had arisen outside the circle of papal influence during 
the darkest days of its degradation, indeed, and entirely 
independent of the empire. This had started from the 
monastery of Cluny, founded in 910, in eastern France, 
as a reformation of the monastic life, but it involved 
gradually ideas of a wider reformation throughout the 
whole church. Two great sins of the time, as it regarded 
them, were especially attacked, the marriage of priests 
and simony, or the purchase of ecclesiastical preferment 
for money, including also appointments to church offices 
by temporal rulers. 

Neither of these principles was new in the requirement 
of the church, but the vigor and thoroughness of the de- 
mand were new, and both principles were carried to fur- 
ther consequences than ever before. It is easy to see, 
also, that, if they were carried out in any thorough- 
going and complete way, they would necessarily involve 
a most perfect centralization of the church, and this was 
a part of the Cluny programme. The absolute subor- 
dination of all local churches to the central head, the 
pope, and the entire independence of the church, both in 
head and members, of all control by the state, were in- 
evitable corollaries of its position. 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 237 

The earnest spirit of Henry III was not out of sym- 
pathy with the demand for a real reformation, and with 
the third pope of his appointment, Leo IX, in 1048, the 
ideas of Cluny obtained the direction of affairs. Leo 
was an able man, and undertook a restoration of the 
papal power throughout Europe with vigor and deter- 
mination, though not with uniform success. He did not 
recognize the right of the emperor to appoint the pope, 
and refused to assume the place until he had been ca- 
nonically chosen in Rome, but on his death his successor 
was again appointed by Henry. 

One apparently insignificant act of Leo's had impor- 
tant consequences. He brought back with him to Rome 
the monk Hildebrand. He had been brought up in a 
monastery in Rome in the strictest ideas of Cluny, had 
been a supporter of Gregory VI, one of the three rival 
popes deposed by Henry, who, notwithstanding his out- 
right purchase of the papacy, represented the new reform 
demand, and had gone with him into exile on his deposi- 
tion. It does not appear that he exercised any decisive 
influence during the reign of Leo IX, but so great was 
his ability and such the power of his personality that by 
gradual steps he became the directing spirit in the papal 
policy, though his influence over the papacy before his 
own pontificate was not so great nor so constant as it 
is sometimes said to have been. 

So long as Henry lived the balance of power was de- 
cidedly in favor of the emperor, but in 1056 happened 
that disastrous event, which occurred so many times at 
critical points of imperial history, from Arnulf to Henry 
VI, the premature death of the emperor. His son, Henry 
IV, was only six years old at his father's death, and a 
minority followed just in the crisis of time needed to 
enable the feudal princes of Germany to recover and 
strengthen their independence against the central gov- 
ernment, and to give free hands to the papacy to carry 



238 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

out its plans for throwing off the imperial control. Never 
again did an emperor occupy, in respect either to Ger- 
many or the papacy, the vantage-ground on which Henry 
III had stood. 

The minority was thus a turning-point in the history 
of Germany and of the church. It was also, in one sense, 
a turning-point in the history of the world, for the real 
religious reformation, which was demanded and which 
had been begun by Cluny, need not, of necessity, have 
involved the extreme centralization in the government of 
the church which had been connected with it and which 
raised the papacy to its position of European supremacy 
in another century. There was needed a strong and able 
emperor of a thoroughly reforming spirit to separate the 
reform which was necessary from the absolutist tendency 
which accompanied it. Whether Henry III could have 
done this we cannot be sure. His death certainly made 
it impossible. 

The triumph of the reform movement and of its eccle- 
siastical theory is especially associated with the name of 
Hildebrand, or Gregory VII, as he called himself when 
pope, and was very largely, if not entirely, due to his 
indomitable spirit and iron will, which would yield to no 
persuasion or threats or actual force. He is one of the 
most interesting personalities of history. The sentence 
of his supporter, Peter Damiani, "He ruled me like a 
holy Satan," has been so often quoted because it de- 
scribes him in a word. His acts were often those which 
properly belong in the kingdom of darkness, but his pur- 
poses were righteous, as he understood the right — a most 
interesting example of the men so numerous in every 
age and in every walk of life who are so thoroughly con- 
vinced of the holiness of their cause that all the means 
which they can use to secure its triumph seem to them 
equally holy. 

The three chief points which the reform party at- 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 239 

tempted to gain were the independence of the church 
from all outside control in the election of the pope, the 
celibacy of the clergy, and the abolition of simony, or the 
purchase of ecclesiastical preferment. The foundation 
for the first of these was laid under Nicholas II by as- 
signing the selection of the pope to the college of car- 
dinals in Rome, though it was only after some consider- 
able time that this reform was fully secured. 

The second point, the celibacy of the clergy, had long 
been demanded by the church, but the requirement had 
not been strictly enforced, and in many parts of Europe 
married clergy were the rule. The attempt which was 
made to compel obedience on this point met with the 
most violent opposition within the church itself, but the 
sympathy of the people was in the main with the re- 
formers and their cause was finally gained. The impor- 
tance of this step and its value in the centralization of 
the church hardly needs to be stated. Not merely was 
the temptation to alienate the endowments of the church 
for the benefit of children removed from the clergy, but 
all their lives were made to centre in the church. They 
were to have nothing else to live for, nothing else to plan 
for. The church secured an army of occupation, thor- 
oughly devoted to itself, in every country of Europe. 
There can be no doubt but that the Cluny party believed 
that they were accomplishing a needed moral reform in 
this matter, but there is also no doubt but that they 
realized and hoped to secure the gain which would result 
from it to the ecclesiastical world monarchy. 

As interpreted by the reformers, the third of their 
demands, the suppression of simony, was as great a step 
in advance and as revolutionary as the first. Techni- 
cally, simony was the sin of securing an ecclesiastical of- 
fice by bribery, named from the incident concerning Simon 
Magus, recorded in the eighth chapter of the Acts of the 
Apostles. But at this time the desire for the complete 



240 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

independence of the church had given to it a new and 
wider meaning which made it include all appointment to 
important offices in the church by laymen, including kings 
and the emperor. 

It is the plainest of historical facts that such appoint- 
ment had gone on, practically undisputed, from the 
earliest times. Under both the public and the private 
law of all the German states the king had such a right. 
According to the private law the founder was the pa- 
tron, and as such enjoyed the right of appointment. 
According to the conception of the public law the bishop 
was an officer of the state. He had, in the great major- 
ity of cases, political duties to perform as important as 
his ecclesiastical duties. The lands which formed the en- 
dowment of his office had always been considered as being, 
more immediately even than the land of lay vassals, the 
property of the state, and were treated as such when the 
occasion demanded, from times before Charles Martel to 
times after Gregory VII. At this period these lands had 
clearly defined feudal obligations to perform, which con- 
stituted a very considerable proportion of the resources 
of the state. It was a matter of vital importance whether 
officers exercising such important functions and control- 
ling so large a part of its area — probably everywhere as 
much as one-third of the territory — should be selected 
by the state or by some foreign power beyond its reach 
and having its own peculiar interests to seek. 

But this question of lay investiture was as vitally im- 
portant for the church as for the state. Not merely was 
the bishop a great ecclesiastical as well as political of- 
ficer, but manifestly also that close centralization of the 
church, which was to be the result of this movement, 
could not be secured if temporal princes should have the 
right of determining what sort of men should occupy 
places of such influence in the government of the church. 
It was as necessary to the centralization and indepen- 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 24.I 

dence of the church that it should choose these officers as 
that it should elect the head of all — the pope. 

This was not a question for Germany alone. Every 
northern state had to face the same difficulty. In En- 
gland during this period the same contest was carried 
through to the same compromise at the end. In France 
the contest did not rise to the same importance from 
accidental reasons, but the result was essentially the 
same. The struggle was so much more bitter and ob- 
stinate with the emperor than with any other sovereign 
because of the close relation of the two powers one to 
another, and because the whole question of their rela- 
tive rights was bound up with it. It was an act of re- 
bellion on the part of the papacy against the sovereign 
who had controlled it with almost absolute power for a 
century, and it was the rising into an equal, or even 
superior, place beside the emperor of what was practically 
a new power, a rival for his imperial position. 

For this was what the movement taken as a whole 
really meant. It is not possible to overstate the signif- 
icance of this age as the time when the possibility which 
lay before it of assuming the control of the whole Chris- 
tian world, political as well as ecclesiastical, dawned upon 
the consciousness of the Roman church. The full power 
which so many men in the past had been laboring to se- 
cure, though only imperfectly understanding it, the posi- 
tion towards which through so many centuries she had 
been steadily though unconsciously tending, the church 
now began clearly to see and to realize that it was almost 
attained and, seeing this, to set about the last steps neces- 
sary to reach the goal with definite and vigorous purpose. 

This cannot be doubted by any one who looks over the 
acts and the claims of the papacy during the time of 
Hildebrand. The feudal suzerainty which is established 
under Nicholas II over the Norman states of southern 
Italy is based distinctly on the rights conveyed by the 



242 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

Donation of Constantine, which, if carried further, might 
be made to cover the whole West. The kings of the grow- 
ing Spanish states are reminded that territory conquered 
from the infidel belongs of right to the pope as vassal 
territory. The same claim is advanced for Hungary. 
The fealty of England is demanded. Most imperious 
letters are written to the king of France. Political af- 
fairs are taken notice of in Scandinavia and in Russia. 
The king of Munster, in Ireland, is informed that all 
sovereigns are subjects of St. Peter, and that all the 
world owes obedience to him and to his vicar. The dif- 
ference between the actual power of the papacy under 
Gregory VII, and again under Innocent III, when it 
reaches its highest point, is due to the circumstances of 
the time which enable the later pope to carry through 
his pretensions to a more successful issue, and not at 
all to any clearer conception of his rights by Innocent. 

It was absolutely impossible that a conflict with these 
new claims should be avoided as soon as Henry IV ar- 
rived at an age to take the government into his own 
hands and attempted to exercise his imperial rights as 
he understood them. 

The details of that conflict it is not possible to follow: 
the divided condition of Germany, which fatally weak- 
ened the emperor's power; the dramatic incident of Ca- 
nossa; the faithful support of the imperial cause by the 
Rhine cities; the rebellion of Henry's son, who, when he 
became emperor, followed his father's policy; the death 
of Henry IV, powerless and under the ban of the church; 
the fluctuations of success, now on one side and now 
on the other. 

The settlement which was finally reached in the Con- 
cordat of Worms, in 1122, was a compromise. 1 The 

1 This concordat may be found, in translation, in Henderson, p. 408; in 
the original, in Matthews, Select Mediceval Documents (Boston, 1892), p. 66 
— a little book which makes easily accessible the text of a considerable 
number of the important documents illustrating the conflict between church 
and empire. 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 243 

church was to choose the man for the office. He was 
then to receive the lay investiture, as a political and 
feudal officer, from the king, and finally the spiritual 
investiture, with the ring and staff, from the church as 
an ecclesiastical officer and a pastor. The state secured 
in this way something of a control, though not so com- 
plete as it had desired, over the interests in which it was 
most concerned. And the church, yielding also some 
of its demands, secured the point most important for 
its protection. It was, in all probability, as fair a settle- 
ment of the dispute as could be reached, and the ques- 
tion practically disappeared — not absolutely, because, as 
opportunity offered in the following times, each of the 
parties tried to usurp the rights which had not been 
granted to it; but the question never again became of 
such universal importance as when it was the central is- 
sue in the conflict between the empire and the papacy. 
When that great strife opened again, nearly half a century 
later, it had shifted to other grounds and presents a 
wholly changed aspect. 

While, however, on the special question the church 
did not secure all that it had claimed or hoped for — 
though all, perhaps, to which it had a just claim — there 
was far more at stake in the contest, as we have seen, 
than the particular point of lay investiture, and in regard 
to these wider interests the victory of the church was 
complete. The change which had taken place in the 
century from the papacy as it existed under Henry III 
was enormous. The popes had emancipated themselves 
from all imperial control, never again to pass under it. 
But they had gained much more than this. Notjneiely- 
was the papacy independent, but it had come up beside 
the empire as a fully co-ordinate and equal sovereignty, 
not merely in theory but in the power actually exercised. 
It was also no longer satisfied with ecclesiastical rule. It 
had greatly enlarged its sphere, and was claiming rights 
throughout Europe which were manifestly political and 



244 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

therefore belonging to the emperor's domain. But the 
emperor was powerless to prevent this extension of papal 
prerogative, and could not possibly interfere with suc- 
cess in cases where the pope made himself obeyed. This 
papal power continued to grow through the twelfth cen- 
tury, greatly aided by the general spirit of the age and 
by the contemporary crusades, and at its close Innocent 
III exercised a more truly international sway than any 
emperor had ever done. 

After the interval of a single reign a new dynasty suc- 
ceeded the Franconian upon the imperial throne — the 
Hohenstaufen — one of the most brilliant families of his- 
tory, producing a most remarkable succession of princes. 
The first of this family to take up in any wide sense the 
old imperial plan, and consequently to come into collision 
with the papacy, was Frederick Barbarossa, whose reign 
begins in 1152. 

This seems to be a new age of conflict between em- 
pire and papacy. This is its surface appearance, and 
this determined largely its external character. But it 
needs only to look below the surface, and not very far 
below, to see that this is not a contest between empire 
and papacy in the old sense. That rivalry is no longer 
as it was before the one leading and central issue be- 
tween the parties. It has rather fallen to the position 
of an incident of the main battle. The great struggle of 
Frederick's life is with powers and principalities which 
did not exist a hundred years earlier. The conflict is 
manifestly of the old empire, a creation of earlier medi- 
eval times and fitted to their conditions, with the spirit 
and conditions of a new age to which it is unfitted, with 
strong forces which are everywhere transforming Europe! 
and which cannot be held back. The struggle is ratherl 
on the part of the emperor to recover and to retain an| 
imperial position from which he is being slowly but irre- 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 245 

sistibly pushed, than to prevent any rival power from 
establishing a similar imperial position beside him. That 
had now been done beyond any possibility of further dis- 
pute. 

The papacy, which was itself in the end also to fall a 
victim, so far as its imperial power is concerned, to the 
forces of the new age, was for the moment their ally. 
And this was in truth the necessary and proper alliance 
for the papacy to make. For, though the new age was to 
prove itself bitterly hostile to certain of the papal pre- 
tensions, its immediate triumph was not so full of danger, 
even to these pretensions, as the triumph of the emperor 
would have been, and, in the end, could not be so destruc- 
tive to the other side of the papal power, its ecclesiastical 
supremacy. 

If we look first at the Germany of that day, which 
would seem to be necessarily the foundation of any strong 
imperial power, we see at once the magnitude of the 
change which had taken place there, and the entire rev- 
olution in the imperial policy since the days of Henry III. 

The subdivision of Germany had now been carried 
much further than at that time. A host of small prin- 
cipalities had escaped from the authority of any inter- 
mediate lord, and now depended immediately upon the 
emperor. Their rights of independence and local gov- 
ernment were much more clearly defined and fully recog- 
nized than then. They were no longer — though they may 
have retained the titles — dukes and counts, that is, officers 
of the empire, but they were " princes," or, in other words, 
sovereigns. Some of them had already begun, with great 
vigor and earnestness, the work of centralizing and con- 
solidating their own territories, and of breaking the 
power of their own vassals, and of the small nobles within 
their reach, in order to prevent that process of disinte- 
gration in their own land which they had themselves ac- 
complished in the kingdom at large. 



246 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

This change in Germany, Frederick I could not reverse. 
It is indeed the trait which is characteristic of his pol- 
icy that he no longer tried to do so. He deliberately in- 
creased the number of the smaller principalities, or raised 
them in titular rank, and sometimes with extraordinary 
concessions of local independence. He did certainly pun- 
ish with severity the refusal of Henry the Lion, the head 
of the great rival power in Germany, that of the Guelfs, 
to aid him in Italy, and broke to pieces the wide dominion 
which he had brought together. But while this was a 
personal triumph for Frederick, the power of the king in 
Germany gained nothing permanent from it. 

The real basis of Frederick's power, and the main 
source of the strength which he could derive from Ger- 
many, for his Italian campaigns, were the extensive 
family possessions of the Hohenstaufen, increased by the 
inheritance of the Franconian family lands, possessions 
which, when brought together were greater than those 
of any other German family with the possible exception 
of the Guelfs. To these resources Frederick added what- 
ever he could at any moment gain from the German 
princes, won often by further concessions from the relics 
of the royal power. 

Frederick I may be said, then, to have begun that 
policy which, though it was a complete abandonment of 
the old imperial policy, is the sole method of the em- 
perors of all later times, the policy of depending chiefly 
upon the strength derived from the personal possessions 
of the emperor, and of using the royal rights as ready 
money with which to purchase, whatever could be pur- 
chased, to add to this private strength. As Frederick's 
reign was the apparent turning-point from the old policy 
to the new one, it was naturally not followed with such 
complete disregard of consequences as it was to be very 
soon after, but it was clearly enough his policy, and we 
may date from his time the surrender of the central gov- 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 247 

ernment in Germany to the sovereignty and independence 
of the princes. 

It is in Italy, however, that the most decisive and 
revolutionary changes, which mark the new age, are to 
be seen. There Frederick found opposed to him an en- 
tirely new and most determined enemy — the cities. 

Favoring causes which were begun or strengthened by 
the crusades, then well under way, and which we shall 
hereafter examine more closely, had led to a rapid devel- 
opment of the cities in power and in the spirit of inde- 
pendence. They had arisen in northern Italy to occupy 
the place which the princes occupied in Germany, that 
is, they were the fragments into which the country had 
divided in the absence of a strong central government. 
Like the princes, also, they had secured rights of local 
self-government, but their governments were of course 
republican in form and not monarchical, and their actual 
independence was probably greater than the German 
princes enjoyed at this time. They had adopted also that 
policy of absorption in respect to the feudal nobles in their 
neighborhood, which the princes were beginning to follow 
in Germany, though in the case of the cities with more 
speedy and complete success. Feudalism, as a political 
institution, had practically disappeared from Italy by 
the middle of the twelfth century. Only two or three of 
the great fiefs still existed. The cities had almost wholly 
absorbed the smaller nobility, and had created larger or 
smaller city principalities by extending their sway over 
as much of the surrounding territory as possible. It was 
manifestly certain that the cities would offer a most ob- 
stinate resistance to any attempt to restore a direct im- 
perial control. 

But in one way the development of commerce and of 
the cities had placed a new weapon in the emperor's 
hands. It had led to a more general and thorough study 
of the ancient Roman law, and this law represented the 



248 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

emperor as absolute in all departments of government. 
Frederick's lawyers said to him: "Your will is the source 
of law according to the recognized legal maxim of the 
Institutes: whatever the prince has approved has the 
force of law." 

It was with the sanction which he derived from the 
authority of the Justinian code that Frederick attempted 
to establish a royal supervision of the local governments 
of the cities, and to revive a number of practically obso- 
lete rights which could be made to yield a considerable 
revenue. What he did has very much the appearance oi 
an attempt to re-establish in Italy that centralized and 
immediate royal government which had been practically 
given up in Germany. 

For the cities it was a matter of vital concern. Not 
merely was the local independence which they had se- 
cured in danger but also their continued commercial pros- 
perity, which would depend very largely upon freedom 
from restraint and the power of self-direction. Therefore 
they made common cause with one another, the most of 
them at least, and drew together closely in the Lombard 
League — an organization which they formed for mutual 
defence against the emperor. 

The details of the struggle we cannot follow. The 
battle of Legnano, in n 76, is worthy of note, in which 
the cities gained a complete victory over the emperor 
and broke his power for the moment. But it was a vic- 
tory from which they did not gain so much as might have 
been expected. With great skill Frederick set about the 
recovery of his position, and he succeeded in separating 
the papacy from the cities, and making a separate peace 
with Alexander III on the basis of mutual concessions. 
Then followed in Germany the overthrow of Henry the 
Lion and the destruction of the power of the Guelfs, and 
after this Frederick found the cities as ready as himself 
to make peace. 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 249 

By the treaty of Constance, which was concluded be- 
tween them in 1183, the general sovereignty of the em- 
peror was recognized, the officers elected by the cities 
were to be confirmed by him, certain cases might be ap- 
pealed from the city courts to his representatives, and 
the special rights which he had claimed were commuted 
for an annual payment from each city large enough to 
afford him a considerable revenue. In reality, however, 
the local sovereignty and independence of the cities were 
recognized by the emperor, and the hope of establishing 
a consolidated national government in Italy, if he had 
cherished it, was abandoned, as it had been in Germany. 
Certainly both these countries had now fallen into frag- 
ments, never again to be united into a national whole 
until after the middle of the nineteenth century. 

The emperor had now made peace with all his ene- 
mies, and the last part of his reign was only slightly 
troubled with opposition. He was master of large re- 
sources and possessed very great and real power. It 
might seem to him almost possible to establish as an 
actual fact the Holy Roman Empire of the theory, and 
there are indications that he thought such a success not 
beyond his reach. But although his position was a bril- 
liant one, a really strong and imperial position, it rested 
upon a very different and far less secure foundation than 
the power of the Ottos or of Henry III. The only actual 
empire which was now possible would be a federal, or 
feudal sovereignty — the overlordship of fully independent 
and self-governing states. It could no longer rest upon 
the solid support of a great nation which would look upon 
it as a glorious expression of its national life. 

Shortly after the Peace of Constance, however, an ad- 
vantage was secured by Frederick which promised to re- 
store, in large measure at least, all that the emperor had 
lost in this way, and which determined the character of 
the final contest between the empire and the papacy. 



250 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

He obtained for his son Henry, already acknowledged as 
his successor, the hand of Constance, heiress of the Nor- 
man kingdom, which included Sicily and southern Italy. 
If this could be made, as a solid and centralized state, 
the basis of an imperial power, then possibly, having this 
advantage to begin with, all Italy could be consolidated, 
and the same thing could afterwards be done in Germany; 
certainly, from its geographical position, the Norman 
kingdom would be more suitable than the German for 
the centre of a world empire. This was a possibility full 
of the greatest danger to the papacy, threatening to sur- 
round its little territory with a strong imperial state, and 
the popes did not fail to see the danger. 

Notwithstanding his short reign, Henry VI was in 
many respects the most interesting of the Hohenstaufen 
emperors, and he was probably the ablest of them all. 
His Sicilian kingdom he obtained only after a long re- 
sistance, but he obtained it at last, and in such a way 
that he was really an absolute sovereign there. At- 
tempted movements in opposition in Germany he suc- 
ceeded in overcoming. The pope was powerless against 
him, and he disposed of a part of the papal territory in 
Italy as if it were his own. Supported by so much real 
strength, his imperial ideas were of the highest and wid- 
est, and the actual international influence which he ex- 
ercised in the last year or two of his life was greater than 
that of any other emperor. He had formed a definite 
plan for the consolidation of Germany and Sicily into a 
single monarchy, hereditary instead of elective, and his 
success seemed altogether likely when suddenly he died, 
in 1 197, in his thirty-second year, leaving his son, Fred- 
erick, three years old. 

In Germany there followed a double election, his 
brother Philip representing the Hohenstaufen party, and 
Otto, the son of Henry the Lion, the Guelf and papal 
party, and in the civil strife which resulted the princes 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 25 1 

rapidly recovered the ground which they had lost in the 
last few years. 

In Rome, a few weeks after the death of Henry, In- 
nocent III was elected pope. Under him the papal 
power, without a real rival and strengthened by the gen- 
eral trend of European affairs during the past century, 
rose to its highest point. He forced the strongest of Eu- 
ropean sovereigns to obey him; he disposed of the im- 
perial title almost as openly as Henry III had of the 
papal; he bestowed on several princes the title of king, 
and established a circle of vassal kingdoms almost com- 
pletely around the circumference of Europe. The im- 
perial position as the head of Christendom, which Henry 
VI had for a moment appeared to occupy, he held in 
reality for many years. He died in 12 16, just at the be- 
ginning of the reign of Frederick II. 

Relieved thus at the start of a rival with whom he could 
hardly expect to cope, and whose successor was his in- 
ferior, Frederick II took up with earnestness and ability 
the plans of his father. With a more absolute control of 
Sicily than any earlier king, with large military strength 
drawn from Germany, with the prestige of a successful 
crusade, he seemed about to accomplish what his grand- 
father had failed to do, to reduce the cities of north Italy 
to the condition of his Norman kingdom under an im- 
mediate absolutism. For a few years following his great 
victory of Cortenuova, in 1237, his final success seemed 
certain, and the papacy seemed utterly powerless to 
resist him further. 

But the strength of his position was more apparent 
than real. His resources were mainly drawn from Sicily, 
and though rich, Sicily showed signs of exhaustion under 
the strain. The support of Germany had been secured 
only by concessions which sanctioned in legal form by 
royal charter the practical independence which the princes, 
both ecclesiastical and lay, had secured, and made it still 



252 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

greater by further sacrifice of royal rights. But what he 
had gained by such means was utterly insecure because 
Germany was so divided by local and personal interests 
that civil strife, and almost anarchy, was certain to ap- 
pear at the first favorable moment. The Italian cities 
were by no means so completely overcome as they seemed, 
nor was the papacy. France and England had no wish 
to see the head of the church entirely overthrown and the 
papal seat left vacant, as it was for two years on the 
death of Celestine IV in 1241. 

Finally, the next pope, Innocent IV, who as bishop 
had been the emperor's friend, but as pope must be his 
enemy, succeeded in escaping to France, and at Lyons 
held a council of the church where Frederick was de- 
posed from the empire. This acted as a signal for all 
his enemies. Civil war broke out in Germany, and an 
opposition king was elected there. The cities in north 
Italy rebelled and gathered new strength. Misfortune 
after misfortune befell the emperor, and, though he could 
not be conquered, his power was gone. 

After Frederick's death, in 1250, the empire could 
never be restored. The great states which had com- 
posed it fell apart; within themselves they were broken 
to fragments and for a few years anarchy reigned almost 
everywhere. After some time the German kingdom and 
the empire reappeared in name. But the old medieval 
empire was no longer possible. It had been completely 
overthrown and destroyed, not in truth by its rival, the 
papacy, but by the conditions of a new age, by the forces 
which were turning the medieval world into the modern, 
and they made its reconstruction beyond the power of 
man. 

But for the moment the papacy was left without a 
rival. Its victory seemed complete and its pretensions 
rose accordingly. It appeared about to step into the 
vacant place, and to be on the point of assuming the im- 



THE EMPIRE AND THE PAPACY 253 

perial titles and prerogatives, when it found itself con- 
fronted with a new enemy, as determined as the old one 
and far stronger, an enemy whose success over its polit- 
ical pretensions was destined to be complete, the new 
spirit of national patriotism and independence. To this 
new conflict we shall come at a later point. 

It is as impossible here, as elsewhere, to determine 
what history would have been if the thing which did 
not happen had occurred. But if it was an inherent 
tendency, as it seems to have been, of either of these 
two great powers to establish a universal empire over 
Christendom, if this was the object for which, consciously 
or unconsciously, either was striving, the one thing which 
prevented such a result was the opposition of the other. 
At the time when the danger was the greatest there was 
no other power in Europe which could have offered suf- 
ficent resistance to either of them. If there was such a 
danger it was the greatest from the papacy, for the 
strength which it derived from the church was far more 
real and effective for such a purpose than any which the 
empire could have drawn, as things were, from Germany 
and Italy or from the theory of the empire. The Holy 
Roman Empire may have entailed loss and suffering, 
which seemed without end, upon Germans and Italians, 
but if they succeeded in holding off the formation of a 
theocratic absolutism over Europe until the modern na- 
tions were strong enough to protect themselves, their sac- 
rifices secured the future of civilization and the possibil- 
ity of their own national existence to-day. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE CRUSADES 

In following the history of the empire and the papacy 
in the last chapter we have passed out of the early middle 
ages into a new and different time. Between the date 
at which that chapter opened and the date at which it 
closed a great change had taken place. New causes had 
begun to work. New forces had been set in operation 
or old ones greatly intensified, and the face of history 
had been transformed. In other words, we have passed 
in that interval the turning-point of the middle ages. 

We have seen, in the history of the first part of the 
middle ages, the introduction of the German element 
which is so important in the modern races, and we have 
traced the rise and some part of the history of the three 
great medieval creations — the Church, the Empire, and 
Feudalism. We have seen the German Empire of Charle- 
magne reinforce the Roman idea of world unity, and in 
the breaking up of his empire the modern nations of 
Europe have taken shape. They have by no means as 
yet obtained their final form, even in their geographical 
outline, far less in government, but they have found the 
places which they are to occupy, they have begun the 
process of growth which is to result in their present 
government, and they are easily distinguishable and have 
begun to a certain extent to distinguish themselves from 
one another in race and language. But it is still the first 
half of the middle ages. Some faint signs may show 
themselves here and there of the beginning of better 

254 



THE CRUSADES 255 

things and of a renewal of progress, somewhat greater 
activity in commerce, more frequent eagerness to know, 
and a better understanding of the sources of knowledge, 
some improvements in writing and in art. But in all 
the main features of civilization the conditions which fol- 
lowed the German settlements remain with little change 
and only slight advance. But the crusades are not over 
when we find ourselves in an age of great changes and 
relatively of rapid progress. 

We must now return and take up the age of transi- 
tion which leads from the earlier stage to the later, and 
ascertain, if we can, the impulse which imparted fresh 
life to the old forces and awakened the new. This age 
of transition is the age of the crusades, the pivot upon 
which the middle ages turned from the darkness and 
disorder of the earlier time to the greater light and order 
of modern times. The age of the crusades, then, is a 
great revolutionary age. Like the age of the fall of Rome, 
or of the revival of learning and the Reformation, or of 
the French Revolution, it is an age in which humanity 
passes, through excitement and stimulus and struggle, 
on into a new stage of its development, in which it puts 
off the old and becomes new. ^ 

The occasion of the crusades was Mohammedanism. 
At the beginning of the seventh century Arabia had been 
revolutionized by the teaching of Mohammed. Put- 
ting into definite and striking form the unconscious 
ideas and aspirations of his people, and adding a central 
and unifying teaching, and inspiring and elevating no- 
tions from various foreign sources, he had transformed a 
few scattered tribes into a great nation and sent them 
forth under a blazing enthusiasm upon a career of con- 
quest entirely unparalleled in its motive forces, and also 
in its extent, unless by one or two Mongolian conquerors. 

This age of conquest lasted till about 750 A. D., and was 



256 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

then succeeded by an equally rapid and astonishing civ- 
ilization, with which we are all somewhat familiar from 
the complete picture of it which has been preserved in the 
"Arabian Nights.'' It was a civilization not merely of 
elegance and luxury and certain forms of art, nor merely 
of commercial enterprise and wealth. In the valleys of 
the Tigris and the Euphrates the Mohammedans became 
acquainted with the work of the Greeks. Something in 
their own race nature seems to have corresponded to the 
especially scientific tendency of the Greek mind. They 
took up the Greek science with very great enthusiasm 
and earnestness, and added to it whatever results of a 
similar sort they could find among any of the other na- 
tions with whom they came in contact — mathematical 
suggestions from the Hindoos, for example. They did 
better than this, for they made additions of their own to 
the stock of scientific ideas which they had inherited. 
Their great work, however, was not in the way of new 
scientific discoveries. They made no great or revolu- 
tionary advance in any one of the sciences. They made 
new observations. They collected and recorded many 
facts. They discovered new processes and methods. 
Their own scientific work was all of that long and pa- 
tient sort, of preparation and collection and gradual im- 
provement of tools, which precedes every apparently sud- 
den achievement of genius. They handed over the work 
of the Greeks much better prepared to lead to such an ad- 
vance than when the Greeks left it. But their great work 
was to hand it over. While the world of western Chris- 
tendom was passing through its darkest ages, the for- 
gotten sciences which the Greeks had begun were cher- 
ished among the Mohammedans, and enriched from other 
sources, and finally given up to Christendom again when 
the nations of the West had become conscious of the 
necessity and the possibility of scientific work and ambi- 
tious to begin it. This was the most important perma- 



THE CRUSADES 257 

nent work for general civilization of the first Moham- 
medan age. 

The first flood of the Arabian conquest had swept over 
the Holy Land, and the sepulchre of Christ had remained 
in the hands of the Saracens. But for Mohammedan as 
for Christian, these were sacred places, and a pilgrimage 
was for him a holy and pious duty even more than for his 
Christian neighbor. While the immediate successors of 
the first conquerors — the Mohammedans of the southern 
races — retained control of Jerusalem, the Christians were 
allowed free access to its shrines, not without intervals 
of harsh treatment under an occasional fanatical caliph, 
and not without some uneasiness on the part of the Sara- 
cens at the rapidly increasing numbers of the pilgrims, 
especially as bands of thousands began to appear^ led by 
princes or great nobles. 

With the advance of the Seljuk Turks, in the eleventh 
century, new conditions were introduced. They were 
a rough and barbarous people as compared with the Sar- 
acens whom they supplanted, and naturally of a cruel 
disposition. As more and more of Palestine and of its 
approaches passed under their control, the pilgrims began 
to meet with very harsh treatment. The great sufferings 
and the miraculous visions of Peter the Hermit are now 
known to have been the inventions of a later age, but if 
he did not suffer what he was fabled to have undergone, 
undoubtedly other pilgrims did suffer something of the 
sort. At last the worst happened, and Jerusalem fell 
into the hands of the Turks. 

But the immediate impulse to the first crusade came 
from the appeal of the emperor at Constantinople for 
aid. The emperor at this time was Alexius Comnenus, 
who had struggled bravely and skilfully for more than 
ten years against attacks from every quarter — Seljuks on 
the east, the Tartar Petchenegs in the Balkans, and the 
ambitious Robert Guiscard on the shores of the Adriatic. 



258 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

He had met with some success and had saved at least 
a fragment of his empire, which had been threatened 
with total destruction. But he was not strong enough 
alone to make any great headway against the Turks. If 
Asia Minor was to be recovered and a real restoration 
of the empire to be accomplished, he must have larger 
forces than he could furnish from his own unaided re- 
sources. In March, 1095, hi s ambassadors appealed to 
Christendom at the Council of Piacenza, held by Urban 
II at a moment of triumph over the emperor Henry IV, 
and later in the year at the Council of Clermont in France 
the fiery eloquence of the pope sanctioned the appeal 
and aroused the whole of Europe. 

The response which his appeal received in the West 
was, indeed, far beyond the emperor's hopes, or wishes 
even. The number of the crusaders was so great, much 
above any possibility of control by him, that the fear was 
at once aroused in his mind lest their advance threat- 
ened his empire with a more serious danger than that 
from the Seljuks. All of them, he might well believe, 
some of them he knew already to his cost in the case of 
the Normans of southern Italy, were actuated chiefly 
by motives of self-interest and the desire of conquest. 
The later attitude of the emperor towards his invited 
allies was not without its justification. 

The response of the West to the appeal of the East 
for help against the infidel was so universal and over- 
whelming, because of the combination at the moment 
of a variety of influences and causes tending to such a 
result. Of these we may easily distinguish three lead- 
ing influences which were especially characteristic of the 
whole eleventh century — the love of military exploits 
and adventures, which was beginning, even in that cen- 
tury, to express itself in the institutions and practices of 
chivalry; the theocratic ideas which were at that time 
advancing the papacy so rapidly to its highest point of 



THE CRUSADES 259 

power; and an ascetic conception of life and Christian 
conduct which, like the last, was not only cherished in 
the church, but held almost as strongly and unquestion- 
ingly by the great mass of men of all ranks. 

All the middle ages were characterized by a restless 
love of adventure, and by greater or smaller expeditions 
to a distance to satisfy this feeling and to gain glory 
and wealth. The knight-errant is so great a figure in 
literature because he was so frequent in the life of the 
time, and even more universally a part of its ideals and 
imaginings. The knight-errant himself may not have 
been common so early, but the feeling was never stronger 
than in the eleventh century, and especially so among 
the Normans, who were so prominent in the first cru- 
sade, as the Norman conquests of southern Italy and 
of England witness. But this cause, however strong, was 
not the decisive one in the crusades. Had it been, they 
would not have ceased when they did, for this motive 
did not cease with them. It never has been more active, 
indeed, than it is to-day, at least in the Anglo-Saxon 
world, as Africa, and the Arctic and Antarctic regions, 
and a hundred other things abundantly testify. 

Nor was the influence of the church, nor the idea that 
it represented God's government, and that through its 
voice God spake and made known His will to man, the 
one decisive influence. That these things were so, men 
thoroughly believed. The growing strength and clearness 
of the belief that God was in the pope, which was a fea- 
ture of the reform movement of the eleventh century, was 
one of the great forces which aided the papacy to win its 
triumph over the emperor, and to rise to the summit of 
its power over the church and over the state as well. 
The call of the pope roused Europe to the great crusades, 
partly, at least, because it was to Europe the call of God. 
But the crusades ceased when they did, not because the 
popes ceased to urge them upon Christendom, nor be- 



260 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

cause the Christian world had ceased to believe in the 
inspiration of the pope, for both these facts continued 
long after the crusades had become impossible. 

It is in the universal prevalence of the third one of 
the influences which have been mentioned — the ascetic 
feeling — that we must find the one decisive cause of the 
crusades. It was the strong hold which this feeling had 
upon prince as well as peasant which made the crusades 
possible as a great European movement. 1 It was its 
decline in relative power as a determining motive of life 
which made them no longer possible. 

It is hard for us in the beginning of the twentieth cen- 
tury to understand how strong a controlling force this 
feeling was in a time when the motives and interests 
which shape our modern life had not come into existence, 
and when the nature and laws of a spiritual world were 
beyond the understanding even of the best. The dark ter- 
rors of the world of lost souls, which they crudely but 
vividly pictured to their minds as horrible physical tor- 
ments, pressed upon them with a reality almost as im- 
mediate as that of the world in which they were really 
living. With their limited experience and scanty knowl- 
edge, and narrow range of interests, there were no sources 
open to them of other impressions with which to correct 
or balance these. The terror of an awful future hung 
over them constantly; and to escape from it, to secure 
their safety in the life to come, was one of the most 
pressing and immediate necessities of the present life. 2 

1 In the Anglo-Saxon states, in the first two hundred years after their con- 
version, thirty kings and queens went into the cloister. Instances of the 
same thing are frequent in other states. The passage in Einhard's Life of 
Charlemagne, chap. II, on the cloister life of Pippin's brother, Carloman, 
is very instructive concerning the general feeling towards monasticism. 

2 It is not meant, of course, that this was an ever-present dread from 
which there was no moment of escape. Life would have been impossible 
if that had been the case. But in order to understand many of the most 
characteristic features of the first half of the middle ages it is absolutely 
necessary to hold in mind the fact that, relatively, as compared with later 
times, these feelings were a constant and absorbing reality of life. 



THE CRUSADES 26 1 

But with the crude and physical conception of the future 
world, a crude and physical conception of the means of 
preparation for it was inevitable. 

The history of monasticism, of pilgrimages, and of the 
whole penitential discipline of the church is full of in- 
stances to show that, in those days, there existed among 
the highest and most intelligent classes of the time an 
intensity of belief in the direct spiritual efficacy of phys- 
ical penances which we hardly expect to find to-day in 
the most ignorant and superstitious. A pilgrimage was 
not an expression of reverence for a saintly life, nor an 
act of worship even. It was in itself a religious act, se- 
curing merit and reward for the one who performed it, 
balancing a certain number of his sins, and making his 
escape from the world of torment hereafter more certain. 
The more distant and more difficult the pilgrimage, the 
more meritorious, especially if it led to such supremely 
holy places as those which had been sanctified by the 
presence of Christ himself. For the man of the world, 
for the man who could not, or would not, go into mon- 
asticism, the pilgrimage was the one conspicuous act by 
which he could satisfy the ascetic need, and gain its 
rewards. 

A crusade was a stupendous pilgrimage, under espe- 
cially favorable and meritorious conditions, so proclaimed 
universally and so entered upon by the vast majority of 
those who took part in it. So long as asceticism as a 
motive influenced strongly princes, and great nobles, and 
the higher classes, the men who really determined events, 
the great crusades were possible. When other interests 
of a more immediate sort rose in the place of this motive, 
its power declined, these men could no longer be led by 
it in the same way, and the crusades ceased. 

But this last suggestion must be carried further back 
and recognized as of the utmost importance in aiding us 
to understand the reason for the crusades as well as for 



262 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

their cessation. It was an essential condition of the move- 
ment that all these motives and causes which favored the 
crusades combined together in their influence upon the 
men of the West at a time when no great interests had 
arisen at home to demand their attention and their 
energies. The time of the migration of the nations was 
past; even the viking raids had ceased. The modern na- 
tions with their problems, hard to solve but pressing for 
solution, had not yet come into existence. Commerce 
was in its infancy, the Third Estate had hardly begun to 
form itself, and the revolution which it would work was 
still far off. None of these existed as yet, with the rival 
interests which they were soon to present to the duty of 
maintaining a Christian kingdom in the Holy Land, or 
even, with the pressure of an immediate necessity, to the 
duty of saving one soul by a penitential pilgrimage. All 
the energy and enthusiasm of the newly formed people 
had no other channel in which to flow. There was no 
other great and worthy object to which to devote them- 
selves, and they devoted themselves to this so long as 
these notions and influences were not balanced by new 
and opposing ones. 

That these motives were strongly at work through the 
whole eleventh century, and gradually turning men's 
minds towards crusades — towards armed expeditions 
which should combine adventurous warfare and rich con- 
quests from the Mohammedan world with the advan- 
tages of holy pilgrimages — can easily be seen. Single 
men and small parties some time before had begun to 
undertake the Christian duty of righting the infidel wher- 
ever he was to be found, and as the century drew to a 
close their numbers were constantly increasing. The little 
Christian states of Spain were greatly aided in their con- 
tests with the Moors by reinforcements of this sort, and 
one of these precrusades led to the founding of the king- 
dom of Portugal. And also from almost every state of 



THE CRUSADES 263 

the West devoted knights had gone, even by the thou- 
sand, to aid the Greek emperor against the Turks before 
his appeal to the pope. Some of the Italian cities had 
combined their commercial interests and their Christian 
duty in attacks upon the Saracens of the western Mediter- 
ranean regions. In 1087 Pisa and Genoa, at the instiga- 
tion of Pope Victor III, and under the holy banner of 
St. Peter, gained important successes in Tunis, and com- 
pelled the emir to recognize the overlordship of the pope. 
A little earlier Pope Gregory VII had conceived the plan 
of sending a great army against the East to re-establish 
there the true faith, but his contest with the Emperor 
Henry IV had allowed him no opportunity to carry out 
the plan. The overwhelming enthusiasm of the first cru- 
sade was the sudden breaking forth of a feeling which 
had long been growing in intensity, because now it had 
gained the highest possible sanction as the will of God 
and a favorable opportunity to express itself in action. 

The crusades continued from the end of the eleventh 
to near the end of the thirteenth century, a period of 
about two hundred years. During this time eight cru- 
sades, as they are commonly reckoned, occurred, with 
many smaller expeditions of the same sort. Of these at 
least the first four, falling within the first hundred years, 
or barely more, are great European movements shared by 
many nations and thoroughly stirring the life of the West. 

The first crusade was led by princes and great nobles, 
from Normandy, of the royal house of France, of Tou- 
louse, of eastern Germany and southern Italy. It went 
overland to Constantinople, forced its way through Asia 
Minor, captured Antioch from the Turks after a long 
siege, and with greatly reduced numbers, in 1099, stormed 
Jerusalem, then in possession of the Fatimite caliphs of 
Egypt. Its conquests it formed into a loosely organized 
feudal state, the kingdom of Jerusalem, divided into a 
number of great fiefs practically independent. 



264 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

The second crusade, fifty years later, was led by the 
Emperor Konrad III and by King Louis VII of France 
on the news of the fall of Edessa, the outpost of the 
kingdom of Jerusalem against the Turks. It attempted 
to follow the overland route, but failed to find a passage 
through Asia Minor, and the remnants of the armies 
made the last part of the journey by sea. In the Holy 
Land it attempted nothing but a perfunctory attack on 
Damascus. 

The third, which is perhaps the best known of the 
crusades, was set in motion by the capture of Jerusalem 
by Saladin in 1 187. It was led by Richard the Lion- 
heart of England, Philip Augustus of France, and the 
Emperor Frederick I. The emperor followed the old 
overland route and died in Asia Minor. Richard and 
Philip made the passage wholly by sea. The difference 
in character of these two men, and the many causes of 
disagreement which existed between them, prevented any 
great success, and the crusade continued to be a failure 
after Philip returned to France, largely because of Rich- 
ard's instability and lack of fixed purpose. 

A decade after, under the greatest of the popes, Inno- 
cent III, the fourth crusade assembled, with high hopes, 
in northern Italy to be transported probably to Egypt, by 
the Venetians, but it never saw its destination. It was 
turned into a great commercial speculation, captured 
Constantinople, and erected there the Latin empire, an- 
other feudal state, which lasted past the middle of the 
thirteenth century. 

The later crusades need not be noticed. They are ex- 
peditions of single nations and lack the general character 
of the first four. The Emperor Frederick II by treaty 
re-established for a brief time the kingdom of Jerusalem; 
and St. Louis, at his death, in 1270, closed the series of 
the crusades usually numbered with the true spirit and 
high Christian motives of the ideal crusader. 



THE CRUSADES 265 

In this line of events two things are to be especially 
noticed as characteristic, and as of assistance in enabling 
us to see the connection between the events themselves 
and the results which followed from them. 

One of them is the different part taken in these expedi- 
tions by the states of Italy as compared with the other 
states. The Normans of the south enter into the first 
crusade like the other Europeans, and in some of the 
later crusades the feudal parts of Italy have their share. 
But, even in the first crusade, some of the city states of 
Italy appear as furnishing ships and conveying supplies 
to the real crusaders, and as time goes on this comes to 
be a more and more important share of the movement 
which falls to them. Italy does not furnish warriors; it 
furnishes ships, transports men and supplies, not for re- 
wards in the world to come but for cash, sells and buys, 
and is constantly on the watch for commercial advan- 
tages. 

The other fact is the gradual change in the route by 
which the crusaders reached the Holy Land as the period 
advanced. The first went wholly overland; the second 
almost wholly, making only the last stage by water. 
Two of the three divisions of the third crusade went 
wholly by water, and all the later crusades, even that 
of Andrew of Hungary. There was a constantly increas- 
ing demand for ships and sailors, and a constantly in- 
creasing ability to meet that demand. 

Before taking up in detail the results of the crusades 
it is important to notice one fact in the general history 
of the middle ages of which they are at once a sign and 
a further cause. They were a great common movement 
of all Europe, shared in alike in motive and spirit and 
action, and on equal terms, by all the nations of the 
West and by people of every rank. They are an indica- 
tion, therefore, that the days of isolation and separation 



266 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

are passing away. In one direction, at least, common 
feelings and common ideals have come into existence 
through all the nations, and a consciousness of the com- 
mon interests of the Christian world as against the Mo- 
hammedan. And these feelings were now held not merely 
by a person here and there, but by the great mass of 
men. Christendom, as a great international community 
which had never entirely ceased to exist since the days 
of Roman unity, had come to a clearer consciousness of 
itself. 

That consciousness was now to grow constantly clearer 
and to embrace by degrees all sides of civilization. The 
crusades are themselves a great cause leading to this re- 
sult. By bringing together the men of all nations, led 
by a common purpose and striving for a common object, 
they made them better acquainted with one another, 
created common needs and desires, and immensely stim- 
ulated intercommunication of all kinds — manifestly the 
necessary conditions of a community of nations. It was 
because these things were so generally wanting that the 
feudal isolation of the preceding age had been possible. 
When they began to exist and to increase rapidly, as 
they did under the influence of the crusades, the modern 
common life of the world had begun to form itself, and a 
great step had been taken out of the middle ages. 

It was no slight thing, also, that the age of the cru- 
sades was an age of intense excitement which seized 
equally upon those who stayed and those who went. It 
was a time when all men were stirred by a deep enthu- 
siasm, and the almost stationary feudal society was pro- 
foundly moved through all its ranks. It is a common 
observation that whatever thus awakens the emotions of 
men and throws society into a ferment of feeling and 
action is a great impelling force which sets all the wheels 
of progress in motion and opens a new age of achieve- 
ment. 



THE CRUSADES 267 

Nor is it to be overlooked that they were on the whole 
generous motives and noble and high ideals which moved 
men in the crusades. There was selfishness and base- 
ness in plenty no doubt, but the controlling emotion with 
the most of the crusaders was, especially in the early 
crusades, a lofty and ideal enthusiasm. 

In the way of the increase of actual knowledge and 
of a direct influence upon learning, the immediate work 
of the crusades was not great. The Greeks in some re- 
spects, and the Saracens in many, were far in advance 
of the crusaders. The Christians had many things to 
learn of the Mohammedans, and did in the end learn 
them; but it was not in the East nor in immediate con- 
nection with the crusades. Some few things were learned 
directly, especially in the line of geographical knowledge, 
but the great influence of the crusades upon learning was 
indirect, in creating a consciousness of ignorance and 
awakening a desire to know, so that the work of the 
crusades in this direction was to raise the level of gen- 
eral intelligence rather than to increase very greatly the 
knowledge of specific facts. 

They gave to the people who took part in them the ad- 
vantages of travel. They brought them into contact with 
new scenes and new peoples, and showed them other ways 
of doing things. Above all, they made them conscious 
of the fact that there were people in the world superior 
to themselves in knowledge and government and man- 
ners and all civilization, and that they had themselves 
many things to learn and to reform before they could 
really claim the high rank in the world which they had 
supposed they occupied. This fact is curiously illus- 
trated in the increasing respect which the writers of the 
age show for the Mohammedans, and it is a most im- 
portant fact in the history of civilization. The mind of 
the West was aroused and stimulated by contact with a 
higher civilization, although it had not yet discovered 



268 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

its best teachers nor the right road by which to reach 
true science. The intense intellectual eagerness of the 
last part of the twelfth and of the thirteenth century, 
though it led into the barren wastes of scholasticism, 
was the beginning of modern science and the first step 
towards the revival of learning. 

We can trace the beginning of this desire to know, as 
we can of so many other things which we call the results 
of the crusades, to times before these began. Even in 
the tenth century can be found many indications that 
the mind of Europe was beginning to awake, to feel an 
eager desire to learn, and even to be conscious of the 
fact that they must turn to the Arabs for instruction. 
Gerbert of Rheims — Sylvester II — is a precursor in spirit 
of Roger Bacon and of Laurentius Valla, as Scotus Eri- 
gena — in the century before — is of his greater namesake 
of the thirteenth century. We should like to believe also 
that the heretics who were burned at Orleans in 1022, 
and of whom we know almost nothing, represent a faint 
stirring of that critical reason which makes a clearer de- 
mand in Abelard in regard to theology, and in the Wal- 
denses in regard to practical Christianity. 

But it is only in the thirteenth century that we reach 
the first great intellectual age since ancient history closed, 
one of the greatest, indeed, of all history. If the work 
to which it especially devoted itself, an abstract and spec- 
ulative philosophy, has been left behind by the world's 
advance, it was nevertheless, in its day, one great step 
in that advance, and in the founding of the universities 
the century made a direct and permanent contribution 
to the civilization of the world. 

The strongest and most decisive of the immediate in- 
fluences of the crusades was that which they exerted 
upon commerce. They created a constant demand for 
the transportation of men and of supplies, built up of 
themselves a great carrying trade, improved the art of 



THE CRUSADES 269 

navigation, opened new markets, taught the use of new 
commodities, created new needs, made known new routes 
and new peoples with whom to trade, stimulated explora- 
tions, and in a hundred ways which cannot be mentioned 
introduced a new commercial age whose character and 
results must be examined in detail hereafter. 

One of the most interesting direct results of the cru- 
sades in this direction was the extensive exploration of 
Asia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by Eu- 
ropean travellers of whom Marco Polo is the most famil- 
iar example, but only one of a host of men almost equally 
deserving of fame. There is nothing which illustrates 
better than these explorations the stimulus of the cru- 
sades, the energy and the broadening of mind, and the 
new ideas which are characteristic of the age. 

In the political sphere the age is as full of change as 
elsewhere. The details must be reserved for a future 
chapter, but the general features may be indicated here. 
The great fact which is everywhere characteristic of the 
time is the rise into power of the Third Estate and the 
fall of the feudal noble from the political position which 
he had occupied. It will be seen later that, in the main, 
this was due to the increase of commerce and only indi- 
rectly to the crusades, but in one or two ways they di- 
rectly aided in the process. The noble, influenced only 
by the feelings of his class, and thrown upon his own 
resources for the expenses of his crusade, did not count 
the cost, or he hoped to gain greater possessions in the 
Holy Land than those he sacrificed at home. Large num- 
bers of the old families were ruined and disappeared, and 
their possessions fell to anyone who was able to take 
advantage of the situation. Whether these lands passed 
into the hands of rich burghers, as they did in some 
cases, or not, was a matter of little importance, since the 
decline of the old nobility and the substitution for it of 
a new nobility was a great relative gain for the Third 
Estate as it was for the crown. 



270 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

Wherever the royal power was in a position to take 
advantage of the changes of the time, as was notably the 
case in France, it gained constantly in relative strength, 
and by the time the crusades were over, feudalism had 
disappeared as a real political institution, and the form- 
ing government of the modern state had taken its place 
— not that the resistance of feudalism to this revolution 
was by any means over, but the opportunity for a com- 
plete victory was clearly before the king. 

Of considerable significance also, in this direction, is 
the part which the lower classes of the population took 
in the crusades, seen most clearly perhaps in the first. 
This has the appearance to us of a general movement 
among the peasantry, and it was a sign, certainly, of dis- 
content with their lot, a vague and ignorant feeling that 
improvement was possible in some way. It was an evi- 
dence also of some new confidence and self-reliance on 
their part, and no doubt it did in some instances improve 
their condition. This movement is, on the whole, how- 
ever, to be regarded like the peasant wars of later times, 
to which it is in its real character very similar, rather as 
the sign of a revolution which is slowly working itself out 
in other ways than as in itself a real means of advance. 

These results, which have been briefly stated, when 
taken together indicate, clearly enough perhaps, the im- 
mediate changes which the crusades produced, and also 
why they came to an end when they did. The changes 
which they represent had created a new world. The old 
feelings and judgments and desires which had made the 
crusades possible no longer existed in their relative 
strength. New interests had arisen which men had not 
known before, but which now seemed to them of such 
supreme and immediate importance that they could not 
be called away from them to revive past and forgotten 
interests, though popes might continue to urge the old 
motives. The less intelligent part of the people, and the 
dreamer, or the mind wholly centred in the church, 



THE CRUSADES 271 

might still be led by the old feelings, and might desire 
to continue the crusade, and actual attempts to do so 
might be made, but the working mind of Europe could 
no longer be moved. Even the popes themselves were 
many times influenced by the spirit of the new age and 
endeavored to make use of the crusading motives and 
passions which still lingered to accomplish their own polit- 
ical ends in the interests of their Italian kingdom. 

One point which has been briefly referred to already 
needs to be distinctly emphasized in closing the account 
of the age. The crusades work great changes, they 
clearly impart a powerful impetus to advance in every 
direction; a far more rapid progress of civilization dates 
from them. But it seems to be equally clear that in no 
single case do they originate the change. The beginnings 
of the advance go further back into the comparatively 
unprogressive ages that precede them. The same changes 
would have taken place without them, though more 
slowly and with greater difficulty. Indeed we may say 
of the age of the crusades, as of every great revolutionary 
age in history, that it is a time, not so much of the crea- 
tion of new forces, as of the breaking forth in unusual 
and unrestrained action of forces which have been for a 
long time at work beneath the surface, quietly and un- 
observed. 

One most prominent institution of the middle ages, 
which deserves a fuller treatment than can be given it 
here, rose to its height during the crusades and in close 
connection with them — that of chivalry. It goes back 
for the origin both of its forms and of its ideals to the 
early Germans. Certain forms which the primitive Ger- 
man tribes had in common — arming the young warrior 
and the single combat, for instance — and certain concep- 
tions of character and conduct which they especially em- 
phasized — personal bravery, truth-telling, and the respect 



272 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

for woman among them— were developed, under the in- 
fluence of the church and of Christianity, into the later 
ceremonies of chivalry, partly solemn and partly barba- 
rous, and into the lofty but narrow ideal of conduct which 
it cherished. The arrangements of the feudal system 
rendered easy the prevalence of its forms, and the spirit 
of the crusading age heightened its conception of char- 
acter and made it seem like a universal duty, so that it 
came, for two or three centuries, to occupy a large place 
in the life of the time, and relatively a larger place in lit- 
erature than in life. 

In the fifteenth century chivalry as an external insti- 
tution, a matter of forms and ceremonies, rapidly de- 
clined. The ideal of social conduct and character which 
it created never passed away, on the contrary, but be- 
came a permanent influence in civilization. In English 
we express very much the same ideal in certain uses of 
the word gentleman, in the phrase "the true gentle- 
man," for example, and, in most respects, no better de- 
scription of that character can be made now than was 
made by Chaucer, in the description of the knight, in 
his prologue to the Canterbury Tales, at the close of the 
age of chivalry. 1 The reason why this modern concep- 
tion of social character insists so strongly upon certain 
virtues, and omits entirely all consideration of certain 
others, equally or even more essential to a really high 
character, is to be found in the peculiar conditions of the 
age of chivalry, its ethical limitations and its class rela- 
tions. 

It was, as far as it went, a Christian ideal of life and 
manners — truth, loyalty, uniform and unbroken courtesy, 
bravery, devotion to the service of the weak, especially 
of one's own class, the sacrifice of self to others in cer- 
tain cases, the seeking of the place of danger when one 
is responsible for others — and such an ideal would cer- 

1 Lines 68-72. 



THE CRUSADES 273 

tairily have come into civilization in some way. His- 
torically it was through chivalry that it became a social 
law. In making up a full account, however, the other 
fact must be included, that the universal prevalence of 
the chivalric standard may have made the proper empha- 
sis of other virtues, which it omitted, more difficult than 
it would otherwise have been. 1 

We have reached with the crusades, then, the turning- 
point of the middle ages. From this time on, history 
grows more diversified, and we cannot, as heretofore, fol- 
low a single line of development and include within it 
the whole field. Three or four great lines of progress run 
through the closing half of medieval history, lines which 
are easily distinguished from one another and which are 
important enough for separate treatment. They will be 
taken up in the following order, which is roughly the 
natural relation of their dependence one upon another. 
First, the commercial development; second, the forma- 
tion of the modern nations; third, the revival of learning; 
fourth, the changes in the ecclesiastical world; and fi- 
nally, the Reformation, the age of transition to modern 
history. 

While we separate these lines from one another for 
convenience of study, it must be carefully remembered 
that they are constantly related to one another, that they 
influence one another at every step of the progress, and 
that perhaps a new advance in some one of them is more 
frequently dependent upon an advance in another line 
than upon one in its own. The attempt will be made to 
make this interdependence of the various lines of activity 
as evident as possible, but it should never be lost sight 
of by the reader. 

3 The reader of Froissart's Chronicles, or of Malory's King Arthur, needs 
no citation of special cases to convince him of the coarseness and barbarism 
which still remained under the superficial polish of the age of chivalry, or 
of its entire disregard of some virtues. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 

If it can be said at all that there is one line of advance 
in civilization which is a necessary condition of progress 
in other directions it would seem to be economic advance. 
It is no doubt true that more than once in history, under 
peculiar circumstances, times which appear to be those 
of remarkable economic advancement have brought with 
them dangers which seemed to threaten the very exis- 
tence of civilization itself, as in the last days of the Roman 
republic. It is also true that sometimes economic im- 
provement has been made possible only by advance in 
other lines, like the establishment of a better govern- 
ment, as in Italy, for instance, during the reign of Theod- 
oric the Ostrogoth. 

The truth is, the various lines of progress are so inter- 
woven, as has already been said, advance in any is so 
dependent on advance in all, that it is not possible to 
say that any one of them, either in theory or in fact, is 
a necessary condition of the others. But this much is 
true, that a country which is falling into economic decay 
is declining in other things as well, and that no general 
and permanent progress of civilization is possible unless 
it is based — the word seems hardly too strong to use 
even if it is a begging of the question — on economic im- 
provement. 

This was emphatically true of the period of medieval 
history which extends from the crusades to the Reforma- 
tion. I hope to make evident, in the portion of this 
book which follows, how completely the various lines of 

274 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 275 

growth which began an increasing activity from the cru- 
sades, and which led out from the middle ages into mod- 
ern history, were dependent for their accelerated motion, 
for immense reinforcement, if not for actual beginning, 
upon the rapidly developing commercial activities of the 
time. Bad roads and no bridges; the robber baron or 
band of outlaws to be expected in every favorable spot; 
legalized feudal exactions at the borders of every little 
fief; no generally prevailing system of law uniform 
throughout the country and really enforced ; a scanty and 
uncertain , currency , making contracts difficult and pay- 
ment in kind and in services almost universal; interests 
and desires narrowed down to the mere neighborhood; 
these were the conditions of the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries. A successful commerce meant necessarily a 
ceaseless war upon all these things, and the introduction 
of better conditions in these respects was, almost in itself, 
the transformation of the medieval into the modern. 

The German invasions had broken up the organization 
of Roman commerce and destroyed large amounts of 
capital. They had diminished the currency in circula- 
tion, lowered the condition of the Roman artisan class 
and broken up their organizations, impaired the means 
of intercommunication, and brought in as the ruling race 
in every province a people on a much lower plane of 
economic development, with fewer wants, hardly above 
the stage of barter, and entirely unused to the compli- 
cated machinery of general commerce. Such a change was 
a severe blow to commerce. Large parts of the empire 
fell back into a more primitive condition, where the 
domain supplied almost all its own wants, very few things 
being bought from without and very few being sold. 

But the invasions did not entirely destroy commerce. 
Even in the worst times there can be found many traces 
of what may be called interstate exchanges, of com- 
merce between the East and the West, or between the 



276 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

North and the South. The church needed, for its orna- 
ments and vestments and in its services, cloths and spices 
and other articles which could not be obtained in the 
West. Nobles made use of numerous articles of luxury 
and display in a life that was, on the whole, hard and 
comfortless. Where wealth existed there was a tendency 
to invest it in articles which would store great value in 
small space, and which could be quickly turned into 
money, or exchanged. The demand, consequently, for 
the articles which commerce would supply, though it was 
limited, was strong, and of a sort which insured a great 
profit. 

Under such circumstances the importation of the goods 
needed was certain to exist. Indeed commerce never 
died out. Every period of good government in any of 
the new German states, as under Theodoric, even if it 
lasted but for a moment, saw a revival of it. Justinian's 
conquests in Italy created a natural line of intercourse 
between the East and the West which continued unbroken 
until the crusades. Even before his invasion, the Vene- 
tians had the reputation of making long voyages, and 
notwithstanding the troublous times which followed, their 
commerce was firmly established by the eighth century. 
Before the eleventh, nearly all the eastern goods which 
found their way into the West-came through Italy, where 
Venice and Amain were the two chief ports. Occasion- 
ally something reached southern Gaul and eastern Spain 
directly, but the overland route through the Danube 
valley seems to have been used only for a brief interval 
or two. In the eleventh century commerce appears to 
have developed rapidly for the time. The conditions 
which rendered the crusades possible, that is, the begin- 
nings of something like a real community life in Europe, 
showed themselves also, and earlier than anywhere else, 
in an increasing commerce, and new cities came up to 
take part in it. Pisa and Genoa were able to conquer 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 277 

privileges from the Mohammedan states of northern 
Africa. Marseilles was in a position to obtain extensive 
favors from the first crusaders. Inland cities, also, had 
begun to have extended relations, as distributing points 
for the goods which reached them overland from Italy, 
and a sea commerce of some importance had begun in 
the North. 

The crusades, then, did not originate commerce, but 
they imparted to it a new and powerful impulse. They 
created at once a strong demand for increased means 
of transportation. The first crusade went overland, but 
the later ones partly or wholly by water. The occupa- 
tion of the Holy Land by the Christians made necessary 
a more lively and frequent intercourse between East and 
West. The crusader states were able to maintain them- 
selves only by constant new arrivals of men and sup- 
plies. The West was made acquainted with new articles 
of use or luxury, and desires and needs rapidly increased. 
Connections were formed with new peoples, as with the 
Mongols. New commercial routes were opened up, geo- 
graphical knowledge increased, and new regions appeared 
in the maps. 

The change in the general atmosphere of Europe which 
accompanied the crusades, the broadening of mind and 
the growth of common interests, favored increased inter- 
communication and exchange, and, from the first crusade 
on, commerce increased with great rapidity, penetrated 
constantly into new regions, aided the growth of manu- 
facturing industries, multiplied the articles with which it 
dealt, improved greatly its own machinery — the art of 
navigation, currency, forms of credit, maritime law, and 
mercantile organization — and exerted a profound influ- 
ence upon every department of human activity. 

The regions embraced within the world commerce of 
the middle ages may be divided for convenience of ex- 



278 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

amination into three divisions — the East, the North, and 
the states, chiefly Mediterranean, which acted as middle- 
men between these two extremes. 

The goal at the East was India, though there was for a 
time some direct overland connection with China start- 
ing from the Black Sea. From the East came the articles 
of luxury and show, which formed the bulk of medieval 
commerce, and returned enormous profits — spices, incense, 
perfumes, precious stones, carpets, hangings, and rich 
cloths. The Christian merchants of Europe could not 
purchase these goods direct from India, but only from 
the Mohammedan states of western Asia, which main- 
tained relations with the farther East. These states could 
sell to India but few articles in exchange — horses, linen, 
and manufactured metals, especially weapons — and large 
quantities of the precious metals had to be exported to 
settle the balance. These oriental goods reached the 
West by a variety of routes, some coming through the 
Black Sea, where Trebizond was an important port; others 
coming up the Persian Gulf and the Euphrates, and reach- 
ing Mediterranean ports like Antioch or Beyroot; others 
by the more southern route, through the Red Sea and 
Egypt. The frequency of the use and the profitableness 
of any one of these routes depended upon the political 
condition of the intermediary Mohammedan states, and 
varied greatly at different times. With the advance of 
the Turks the more northern lines were gradually ren- 
dered impossible, and this was one of the chief causes 
which led to the rapid decline of the commerce of Genoa 
in the fifteenth century, her dependence being chiefly 
upon the Black Sea routes. On the eve of the great dis- 
coveries of the end of the fifteenth century almost the 
only secure and profitable line of connection with India 
was through Egypt. 

The Mohammedan states took of the Western mer- 
chants a much greater variety of goods than India — 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 279 

food supplies, grain, oil, and honey, metals and minerals, 
lead, iron, steel, tin, sulphur, cloth in great variety, 
leather, wool, soap, furs, and slaves — Circassians being 
conveyed, for instance, from the Black Sea to Egypt, 
and even Europeans being sold without much hesitation 
by their Christian brethren when opportunity offered. 
The ships of the West, loaded with the Eastern goods 
which they had purchased, made the return voyage, be- 
set with dangers from pirate attacks and unskilful navi- 
gation, and at home, at Venice or Genoa, the goods were 
unloaded and stored for further exchange. 
l^Ffom the Mediterranean ports overland routes led up 
into the country to important points of interior trade. 
In France and Germany commerce centred about the 
fairs, which were held at fixed seasons. In the great 
fairs wholesale trade was carried on, the merchants from 
the smaller places meeting there the importers who had 
the goods of the East, and so obtaining their supplies. 
In the fairs of the smaller places retail trading was done; 1 
but a very large part of the retail trade of the interior 
was carried on by peddlers, who went about from village 
to village, carrying packs themselves or sometimes with 
horses. 2 

After a time the ships of the Mediterranean ventured 
into the Atlantic, and direct communication by water 
was established with the North. Venice sent regularly 
each year a fleet to touch at ports in England and the 
Netherlands, and the latter country became finally the 
centre of nearly all exchanges between the North and 
the South, so that it should fairly be reckoned as belong- 
ing in the middle region rather than in the northern. 

1 The markets at present held at brief intervals in the Congo State exhibit 
many of the characteristic features of the medieval markets or small fairs. 

2 Cutts, Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages, p. 515, gives the con- 
tents of a foot-peddler's pack from the illustrations of a manuscript. It 
contained gloves, belts, hoods, a hat, mirrors, a dagger, a purse, a pair of 
slippers, hose, a musical pipe, etc. 



280 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

Bruges was the chief place for this traffic, and it came 
to be filled with the warehouses of the different nations 
where their goods were stored for exchange. 

The North was the great source of food supplies and 
of raw materials for the increasing manufactures of the 
middle region — grain, wool, hides, tallow, salt meat and 
fish, flax, hemp, timber, furs, and tin and other metals. 
The North developed, from the thirteenth century on, a 
very extensive and diversified commerce of its own, with 
a more compact organization through the Hanseatic 
League than Italian commerce had, and reaching into 
Russia and by degrees becoming bold enough to send its 
ships into the Mediterranean. Before the end of the 
middle ages there was also considerable manufacturing in 
some countries of the North. 

Notwithstanding the great development of commerce 
and manufactures, and the multiplication of articles of 
use and luxury which followed, the lives of most men 
still continued to possess few comforts to the end of the 
middle ages. From the first century of the crusades 
many articles which we now consider among the neces- 
sities of life, chimneys, windows of glass, bedroom and 
table furniture, carpets, clocks, artificial lights, and other 
things of the sort began to make their appearance in the 
houses of the rich, commonly first in the cities, and were 
slowly adopted by the country nobles. The poorer peo- 
ple of the country remained in general without them, and 
with the insufficient diet of all classes, consisting chiefly 
of pork or salt meats, and the coarse grains, with very 
few vegetables, and the general uncleanliness of person 
and of surroundings, it is not strange that the average 
length of life was short and that frequent plagues carried 
off large numbers of all ranks. 

By the fifteenth century commerce had lost much of 
its earlier simplicity. It had become greatly diversified, 
and had taken on many of its more modern features. 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 28 1 

With this transformation of its character some of the 
problems of international exchange began to arise before 
the mind of the time, now capable of taking wider views 
than once, and men began to grope, at least in a half- 
conscious way, for the solution of questions which we do 
not seem to have settled, at least to the satisfaction of 
all, even yet — the relation of the supply of gold and sil- 
ver to the national wealth, and the theory that national 
wealth may be increased and commerce developed by 
legislative restrictions of one sort or another upon the 
commerce of other people. 1 

It can hardly be supposed that the theories of inter- 
national trade, which began to take shape at this time, 
were permanent contributions to civilization, but cer- 
tainly they have profoundly affected its course ever since. 
Recent times have not been more intensely interested in 
any subject than in the question whether legislation should 
continue to be controlled by them or not. These theories 
were formed at a time when the facts upon which they 
were supposed to be based were very imperfectly under- 
stood. Experience in general commerce was only just 
beginning, and any real knowledge of the laws which 
operate in it, or even of its primary facts, was entirely 
impossible. These ideas were pure theories, almost as 
completely so as the speculations of any closet philos- 
opher who ever lived. Probably there is not to be found 
in any other department of civilization an attempt to 
carry out pure theories in practice on such a scale as this. 
But these ideas had an apparent and temporary basis of 
fact in the existence of a narrow but extremely profitable 
trade, so situated that it could be artificially controlled — 

1 The legislation of a distinctly protective character, of which ours is the 
direct descendant, began in the fourteenth century, though there are un- 
connected cases of the same sort of legislation much earlier. The theories 
upon which the mercantile system was based began to be put into definite 
shape in the sixteenth century. See Lalor's translation of Roscher's Polit- 
ical Economy, vol. II, App. II and III, especially pp. 441 ff. 



282 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

one, in other words, which could be made to operate for 
a time like the exclusive possession of a gold mine — and 
there was no experience at hand to show that this condi- 
tion of things was temporary and exceptional. These 
theories had further an extremely plausible foundation 
in the apparent self-interest of the moment, and they 
obtained a hold upon the popular mind which the better 
informed have found it extremely hard to loosen. 1 

For our purpose these forming theories are far less 
important in themselves than as signs of the wider views 
and more comprehensive grasp of mind which they cer- 
tainly indicate and which was now possible, made pos- 
sible in large part by the extension of commerce itself. 

These expanding ideas are revealed still more clearly 
in the possibility which dawned upon the minds of many 
men in the fifteenth century of far wider extensions of 
commerce than any which lay along the old lines — the 
first faint traces of the idea of a world commerce, and 
even of a conception of the world itself in anything like 
its actual reality. It was only the first beginning of these 
ideas, but they were held strongly enough for men to 
take the risk of acting upon them, and the discoveries 
of the last years of the century resulted, wMchjiotmerely 
opened new worlds to commerce but broadened immensely 
all horizons. 

The impulse to exploration and the daring spirit and 
pluck of the explorer had come with the first expansion 
of commerce, and as early as the thirteenth century the 
then "dark continent'' of Asia had been traversed by 
many Europeans. The immediately active cause, how- 

x The difficulty in the case is hardly more, however, than that which 
every science finds in getting its own carefully formed inductions accepted 
in the place of the pure theories with which the popular mind explains all 
partially understood facts. That the theories in this case are apparently 
closely bound up with selfish interests makes the process a more exciting 
one, and gives the adversary, perhaps, an unusual advantage, but it can- 
not make the result different in the end. 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 283 

ever, of the oceanic discoveries of the fifteenth century- 
was the coming up of new nations eager to take part in 
the extremely profitable commerce in Eastern goods, at 
the moment when the Turkish conquests in the north- 
ern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean were nar- 
rowing down the possibilities of that commerce as it had 
existed, and the footing of the Venetians in Egypt made 
competition with them very difficult. The Portuguese 
were the first of these new nations to cherish this com- 
mercial ambition, and they turned their attention to find- 
ing a way to India around Africa. In the first half of 
the fifteenth century Prince Henry of Portugal nobly 
devoted his life to the encouragement of these explora- 
tions, because, as he thought, they fell naturally within 
the duty of princes, since they afforded no good hope of 
profit to tempt the merchant. 

It required no little daring to sail into unknown seas 
in an age when men fully believed that they might meet 
with the adventures of Sindbad the Sailor, and worse 
things also, and progress was necessarily slow. One ex- 
pedition advanced along the coast as far as it dared, and 
when it returned in safety the next one ventured a little 
farther. In 1434 they passed Cape Bojador; in 1441, 
Cape Branco; in 1445, Cape Verde; in 1462, Cape Sierra 
Leone; in 147 1 they reached the Gold Coast; the equator 
was crossed in 1484, or possibly a little earlier; in i486 
Bartholomew Diaz turned the Southern Cape, henceforth 
the Cape of Good Hope; and finally, in 1498, Vasco da 
Gama reached India. This first success the king of 
Portugal immediately followed up by sending fleets espe- 
cially fitted out for trading, and though they were bitterly 
opposed in India by the Arabs of Egypt, whose monopoly 
was threatened, they returned with loads of spices. 

The revolution wrought by the opening of this new 
route was tremendous. Venice, though in a favored posi- 
tion, had been compelled to buy her goods in Egypt at 



284 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

a great disadvantage, as the Arabs had a practical mo- 
nopoly. Heavy tolls and dues were added to the original 
cost, and the Portuguese were able to buy in India at 
only a fraction of the cost to the Venetians in Egypt. 
Venice was thrown into a panic. Contemporary evi- 
dence is said to show that when the news first came 
that spices had reached Portugal direct from India, the 
price of such goods fell more than fifty per cent in Venice. 1 
For the Venetians it was certainly a question of life 
and death. Their whole commercial existence depended 
upon the result. They urged the Arabs of Egypt most 
earnestly to oppose the Portuguese in India in every way 
possible; they discussed for a moment the opening of a 
Suez canal, and even the project of securing an overland 
route around the Turkish dominions in alliance with the 
Russians. But it was all in vain. The world's com- 
merce had outgrown the Mediterranean. Six years be- 
fore Vasco da Gama's success Columbus had reached 
America, and the world passed at once out of the middle 
ages. 

Commerce had hardly more than begun its new activ- 
ity before its influence began to be felt far outside its 
own proper field. It is entirely impossible to indicate, 
in anything approaching a chronological order, the vari- 
ous ways in which this influence was directly exerted. 
Even an attempt to state them in something like a logical 
sequence can be of value only as serving to indicate for 
examination the points of contact between this increasing 
commerce and other lines of advance during the same time. 

x The trade continued, however, extremely profitable. The Portuguese 
are said to have sold their spices at the time of their supremacy at a profit 
of at least six hundred per cent. At the beginning of the seventeenth cen- 
tury the profits of a successful voyage often reached two hundred per cent. 
These high profits, however, had to make good many losses. The average 
annual dividend, declared by the Dutch East India Company, from 1605 
to 1720, was 22% per cent on a capital stock partly "water." 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 285 



r ith the growth of commerce cities began to arise. 
Italy and Gaul had numerous great cities in Roman times, 
and most of these continued after the invasion unde- 
stroyed, but with their relative importance diminished, 
and in many cases certainly with their institutions modi- 
fied. Roman Germany had a few cities, and of these at 
least Cologne retained a noticeable civic and commercial 
life through the period before the crusades. The interior 
and north of Germany had no cities in the Roman times, 
and only slight beginnings of them before the eleventh 
century. 

With the revival of commerce these old cities wakened 
to a new activity and grew rapidly in size and wealth. 1 
New cities sprang up where none had existed before, per- 
haps about a fortified post or near a monastery where a 
local market or fair began to be held. The privileges 
granted to the market attracted merchants to settle there 
and gradually widened into considerable rights of self- 
government and a local law, and, often at least, as the 
city formed about the market and was enabled by cir- 
cumstances to take its place as an independent member 
of the national community, the original market rights 
gradually developed into the city constitution. 

The natural tendency on the part of the city to strive 
for local independence and self-government was greatly 

1 The long-disputed question as to the continuance of Roman municipal 
institutions across the dark ages is one which concerns the special institu- 
tional history of municipal government rather than the history of the rise 
of cities in general. The causes of the general movement are those indi- 
cated above, whatever may be true as to the origin of special features in 
the municipal constitution. It seems pretty clearly proved that in Germany 
a majority of the cities reached their rights of self-government by a gradual 
enlargement of the market privileges which were granted them at the be- 
ginning of their history. This fact does not preclude, however, the influ- 
ence of Roman institutions elsewhere, and it is highly probable that such 
an influence was felt in individual cases at least. While the general causes 
and general features of the moment are similar in all the states, it would be 
absurd to assume a uniformity in details which exists nowhere else in the 
middle ages. 



286 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

aided by the fact that at the time when the movement 
began the feudal system was at its height as the prevail- 
ing form of political organization throughout Europe. 
It was itself the realization, as far as possible, of the idea 
of local independence, and though the feudal lord on 
whose territory the city had grown up might struggle to 
maintain his control over it, the logic of the whole situa- 
tion was on the side of the city. The example which the 
lord had set in his effort to escape from his dependence 
upon his suzerain was a very plain one to follow, and the 
feudal system furnished forms of easy application which 
secured a practical independence. 1 

This was especially true of France, and though the cit- 
ies of Italy exhibit more fully some other results of the 
movement which are extremely important in the history 
of civilization, the French cities reveal more clearly than 
those of any other country the political tendencies in the 
general government of the state, which the rise of the cit- 
ies everywhere favored, but which were more completely 
realized in the kingdom of France than in any other of 
the large states of Europe. 

In France, though opposed in spirit to the feudal sys- 
tem, the movement follows distinctly feudal forms, and 
the tendency is always towards the formation of "com- 
munes." By no means all the cities of France succeeded 
in reaching this result, and in organizing actual com- 
munes, probably only a small proportion of them did, 
but the tendency is in that direction, and those that 
failed stopped at some intermediate point in the process. 

The commune is, strictly speaking, a corporation re- 
garded as a feudal person, and, as such, having the obli- 
gations and the rights of a vassal in respect to its lord 

1 An interesting case is the little republic of Andorra, where feudal forms 
allowed the establishment of a local independence which has been preserved 
into our own times. See the article by Professor Bernard Moses, in the 
Yale Review, vol. II (1893), pp. 28-53. 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 287 

and able to become a suzerain in its turn. The act of 
forming a commune within the limits of a feudal terri- 
tory was an act of subinfeudation — the formation of a 
subfief where none had existed until then. Before the for- 
mation of the commune the town was a group of persons, 
brought together in ordinary cases from a great variety 
of sources, some of them were full freemen, or even small 
nobles, of the country or neighborhood, some were for- 
eigners to the country or to the fief who had settled in 
the place for purposes of trade, and so were subject to 
various feudal dues to the lord, some of them were serfs 
of varying degrees of right with respect to the lord, and 
therefore subject to special exactions for his benefit. If 
regarded as a whole in this stage of its history, the town 
was considered a serf and was so treated in law. By the 
grant of a commune this group of persons was transformed 
into a single person and raised to the position of a vassal, 
subject no longer to the varying and indefinite rights of 
the lord over serf and foreigner as individuals, but only 
to the limited obligations specified in the contract of the 
fief between the lord and the commune. This contract 
was under the ordinary feudal sanctions. The officers of 
the commune paid homage and swore the vassal's oath 
to the lord, and he, in turn, swore to observe his obliga- 
tions towards them. 

The special obligations which the commune entered 
into towards the lord differed in different cases like those 
of other vassals, but within the limits established by these 
obligations in the given case the commune obtained the 
right to regulate its own affairs as every vassal did. This 
meant, of course, for the city the right of local self-gov- 
ernment, though the growth of the general government 
in France did not allow the result which was reached in 
Italy and Germany, the establishment of a virtually in- 
dependent city state. 

Besides the commune proper, there was in France a 



288 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

multitude of cities and towns which never became full 
communes, but which obtained by definite contracts more 
or less extensive rights of self-government and of free- 
dom from exactions. These were the miles de bourgeoisie, 
or chartered towns. The number of these towns was 
much greater than that of the real communes, and their 
influence on the general results which followed from this 
movement was precisely the same. The difference was 
not one of principle or of character, except in the strictly 
legal sense, but one which concerned the completeness of 
the local rights secured. 

It is easy from what has been said to understand the 
attitude of the local baron towards the commune. To 
grant the right to form such an organization was to cut 
off so much of his fief from his own immediate control. 
It was to diminish his rights of exaction and to reduce 
his power. Opposition was natural. In very many cases 
the commune succeeded in establishing itself only after 
a long and bitter conflict, and as the result of a victory 
which forced the lord to yield. 

This was particularly true of the attitude of the eccle- 
siastical nobles towards the town. The seat of every 
bishop was in an important city. The larger abbeys also 
were, as a rule, in the towns, and so it happened that 
the towns which began to strive for local independence 
were more likely to be in ecclesiastical than in lay fiefs. 
The larger portion of the long-continued and desperate 
struggle between the rising cities and the older power 
was in fiefs held by the church. 

Among the lay nobility it was more likely to be the 
small noble, the lord of the locality, who opposed the city 
than the great lord whose domain included a province. 
The small noble saw the town growing up in his little ter- 
ritory, perhaps out of nothing or next to nothing, and 
menacing his dominion with a serious danger, possibly 
even threatening to annex it entirely, and to crowd him 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 289 

to the wall. The inferior nobility were in many cases 
contending for existence, and sometimes in France, as 
happened so generally in Italy, they were absorbed into 
the town; in some cases they seem to have gone into the 
commune voluntarily and with good-will. 

The great nobles whose territories were principalities 
followed no common policy. If the count or the duke 
was strong, and his government a really centralized one, 
as was the case in some instances, he seems to have fa- 
vored the growth of the towns with chartered rights but 
not of communes, keeping the real control in his own 
hands. If his power was weak and divided, usurped by 
vassals whom he could not hold to obedience, he favored 
the development even of the commune as a means of 
weakening them. In some cases, also, the great lords 
seem as bitterly opposed to the cities as the great officers 
of the church. 

The wavering policy of the French kings towards the 
movement, which is not in reality so inconsistent as it 
appears at first, is to be explained in the same way by 
their relation to their vassals. The early Capetians no 
doubt perceived the advantage which the independence 
of the towns would give them in weakening the power 
of the feudal barons, and did not hesitate to grant their 
aid to the efforts of the cities whenever they were able 
to do so. They early labored to establish the principle 
that the commune, once formed, belonged immediately 
to the king, and was in an especial degree under his pro- 
tection. But the early Capetians were in a peculiar posi- 
tion. From the weakness of their general power they 
were especially dependent upon the support of the church, 
and this was in truth one of the chief sources of their 
strength. In many cases they could not break with these 
allies nor afford to support their enemies, though they 
might on other grounds have been glad to do so. We 
have them, therefore, following a policy which seems 



290 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

contradictory, aiding the communes where they could do 
so safely, and opposing them elsewhere, because in the 
latter cases there was danger of losing more than might 
be gained. 

As the monarchy grew stronger and more independent 
of the support of the church, we find the kings adopting 
a more consistent policy, and at the beginning of the 
thirteenth century distinctly favoring the cities. As they 
grew stronger still, and something like a real centraliza- 
tion began to be possible, then the commune with its 
rights of independent local government stood, as the 
king looked at it, much in the same attitude towards 
the general government as the independent feudal baron. 
It represented a bit of the territory of the state in which 
the central power did not have free sway. Consequently, 
we have later kings endeavoring to break down the priv- 
ileges of the communes and to gain a direct control by 
introducing into them royal executive and judicial offi- 
cers. This process can be clearly traced before the close 
of the thirteenth century, and it is very speedily con- 
cluded, partly because of the isolated position of the 
communes and their inability to combine as the barons 
did, and partly because they had always recognized a 
more direct right of government on the part of the king, 
and had never become independent, as had the cities of 
Italy and Germany. 

Towards the towns which were not communes, the 
miles de bourgeoisie, the policy of the kings was more 
consistent and more steadily favorable. These towns had 
not gained a complete self-government and were not 
closed against the officers of the king, but their forma- 
tion was as great an aid to him as that of the communes 
in his efforts to build up the power of the central govern- 
ment by weakening the baronial power. 

But in many other ways, and really in more decisive 
ways than by dividing their fiefs and weakening their 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 29 1 

local power, the growth of the cities, or the increase of 
commerce as the underlying cause, rendered it no longer 
possible for the feudal lords to maintain the position 
which they had held in the state. 

One of the direct results of the growth of commerce 
which had this effect was that a much larger amount of 
money was brought into circulation, and its use was made 
more general. In the thirteenth century not only did gold 
begin to be coined, but also coins of much smaller de- 
nominations than formerly, a sure sign that commercial 
transactions were becoming more frequent among the 
lower classes, and that sales were beginning to take 
the place of barter. From the cities and smaller towns 
the money would work its way into the country and 
gradually come into more common use among the la- 
borers on the farms. 

This increased circulation of money struck at the very 
root of feudalism. The economic foundation of the feu- 
dal system was the scarcity of money and the impossi- 
bility of using it freely for purchases to supply daily needs 
which must be supplied in any state of society. It was 
scarcely possible, in such conditions, for rent and income 
to take any other form than that of personal services and 
payments of produce. Feudalism as a means of carry- 
ing on government had its foundation also in the polit- 
ical conditions of the time, as we have seen, but it was 
hardly possible for these conditions to change, to such an 
extent as to lead to the overthrow of the system, so long 
as it was difficult in all political relations as well as in 
agriculture, which was the main source of income, to 
substitute some other kind of payment for payments in 
services and in kind. 

As soon as money came into increased general circula- 
tion the situation was changed. It became possible to 
substitute definite and specific contracts for the arrange- 
ments, always more or less vague, of the manorial cus- 



292 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

toms, and the increased usefulness of money was a con- 
vincing argument with the lord, in very many cases at 
least, that the money paid in commutation of services 
would be of greater value to him than the services them- 
selves, uncertain and irregular, and performed with great 
reluctance as they usually were. But the introduction of 
money payments in this way, in the place of customary 
services, while it left the feudal lord in title and rank 
and social position what he had been, deprived him of 
his immediate personal hold upon his subjects and un- 
dermined his political power. This was still more the 
case as money took the place of services on the political 
side, as in the payment of scutage instead of military 
service, which began to be important in England soon 
after the second crusade. 

It must not be understood that this was the sole or 
even the chief cause of the fall of feudalism. A hundred 
causes worked together to that end. Nor must it be sup- 
posed that all feudal or manorial services disappeared. 
It was only here and there in the most favored localities 
that this was the case, and in some of these even, some 
such services have remained, in form at least, to the 
present time, while in some parts of Europe feudalism 
can scarcely be said to have declined at the end of the 
middle ages. Nearly everywhere it had, however, and 
for peasant and burgher, in their rise to independence, 
scarcely anything was so helpful as the increased circu- 
lation of money. 

This more general use of money had also most impor- 
tant consequences in another direction. It made taxa- 
tion possible. The extension of commerce had led to 
large accumulations of wealth in the cities. Here was 
a new resource for the state which, if it could be made 
to contribute to public purposes in some systematic and 
reliable way, would relieve the central power of its de- 
pendence upon the feudal system, and give it a new and 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 293 

more solid foundation on which to build, an indispensable 
foundation indeed. Arrangements long in use provided 
an easy way of introducing the cities directly into the 
state machinery, and of obtaining from them their con- 
sent to a levy of taxes of which they were to pay the 
larger portion. The cities showed evident signs of a re- 
luctance to part with their wealth, as was natural, but 
there were, on the other hand, reasons of their own which 
prevailed with them to consent. 

The accumulation of capital in the towns and the ex- 
tension of commerce throughout the country created an 
intense demand for order and security. Nothing makes 
so strong a demand for these things, or tends to secure 
them so perfectly, as the possession of wealth. The feu- 
dal confusion, the private wars, the robber baron, so 
prominent a feature of declining feudalism, were the 
deadly foes of commerce, as the merchant was of them. 
His protection was to be found in the establishment of a 
public power able to suppress these evils and to main- 
tain order throughout the state, and wherever such a 
public power was forming the capitalist class of the day 
came to its aid with all its resources. No doubt it was 
anxious to do this with as little expense to itself as pos- 
sible, but it was ready to sacrifice its wealth unsparingly 
in its own defence when directly attacked, and it did not 
fail to see the advantage it would gain from providing 
the king with a revenue which would support a stand- 
ing army and a national system of courts of justice. 

Commerce and wealth came to the aid of the forming 
national government not merely in the fact that they 
created a demand for established order but also by a 
demand for uniformity. Commerce extended from com- 
mon centres through the entire state, and bound it to- 
gether in a united system with lines as living and real 
as those of the church organization. The interests of the 
merchant were alike everywhere, and it was extremely 



294 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

important for him to know what he had to expect in 
every locality. The arbitrary exactions of the uncon- 
trolled feudal lord; the varying tolls and dues of every 
little fief; a hundred systems of coinage on whose purity 
and honesty no dependence could be placed; worse still, 
if possible, the local customary law differing from every 
other in points perhaps of the greatest importance to the 
merchant and enforced by an interested local court from 
which there might be no appeal — these things were, in 
the long run, more serious obstacles in the way of com- 
merce than private wars and robber barons. The whole 
influence of the merchant class and of the cities was to- 
wards doing away with this local confusion of practice, 
and towards putting in the place of it a national control, 
national coinage, courts, and law. 

In the matter of a national law the influence of the 
cities was especially strong. It was in this respect not 
merely a general influence, a favoring condition, which 
the cities created. In the cities the professional lawyer 
made his appearance and the study of the Roman law 
was begun and actively pursued. This was possible be- 
cause the growth of the cities and the accumulation of 
wealth in them meant leisure. That leisure which had 
been possible in the earlier middle ages only to the eccle- 
siastic became possible now to men outside the church. 
They could devote themselves to intellectual pursuits 
with a certainty of support. The new study of the 
Roman law, which began in this way, and which the 
cities strongly favored, as a general and highly organized 
system ready made for their purpose in place of the feu- 
dal variety and confusion, gave congenial employment to 
this new class and gave rise to the professional lawyer. 
He was a layman and a bourgeois, but he was a man of 
thoroughly trained intellect, of self-respect and pride as 
great as the noble's, and he cherished the strongest ideas, 
derived from the system of law in which he had been 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 295 

trained, of the supremacy of a national law, and of the 
right of the sovereign to exact obedience everywhere. It 
followed that, in his efforts to recover the legislative and 
judicial power, and to establish a uniform law, the king 
had not merely the general support of the cities, but they 
furnished him also with a ready-made and highly per- 
fected legal system capable of being immediately applied, 
and with a force of trained men earnestly devoted to its 
establishment and enforcement. 

We have here sketched somewhat briefly the influences 
which commerce everywhere tended to exert, and the 
results which it everywhere tended to produce. These 
are to be found reaching their logical conclusion, in com- 
bination with other causes, only in France, and there 
the logical result involved the destruction of the inde- 
pendence of the cities. Other states of Europe show 
results of this movement which are peculiar to them- 
selves, and some of them exhibit tendencies which just 
as truly belong to it, but which do not appear so clearly 
in French history because there the political result was 
so fully worked out in the establishment of an absolute 
central government. 

In Italy the existence of the Holy Roman Empire, 
together with the policy which the popes adopted in de- 
fence of their political independence, prevented the for- 
mation of any native national government while the 
empire furnished the pretence of one. In consequence 
of this the cities, when they became strong, found them- 
selves depending upon a shadowy state whose sovereignty 
they recognized in form, but which was not at hand to 
exercise a real and direct government. As a result, the 
cities in Italy found it easy to become little independent 
states, after the manner of the feudal principalities in 
Germany. Their early and rapid growth enabled them 
to absorb nearly all the nobles of the country, and they 



296 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

intrenched themselves so strongly that when the Hohen- 
staufen emperors attempted to bring them under a di- 
rect control, they were able, in combination, as we have 
seen, to maintain and secure their independence. 

The peculiarities of their growth had made them as 
independent of one another as they were of the state, 
and except when brought together by some common 
danger, each pursued its own interests without regard to 
the others. It often happened that conflicting interests 
led to the fiercest struggles between them, ending only 
with the ruin of one of the rivals, as in the contest be- 
tween Florence and Pisa, or between Venice and Genoa. 
Many of them were able to extend their sovereignty over 
the surrounding territory and smaller towns, and to bring 
together a considerable state as did Milan. In nearly all 
of them, towards the end of the middle ages, corruption 
among the citizens or the necessities of their military 
defence made it easy for unscrupulous and enterprising 
men to establish tyrannies and to destroy their repub- 
lican governments, as in the case of the Medici family 
in Florence or the Sforza family in Milan. 

The diversity of life in these Italian cities, the multi- 
plicity of their interests, their rivalries with one another, 
and the party struggles within their walls, stimulated a 
general mental activity among their citizens, especially 
in the case of the large leisure class which their great 
wealth had created. And so in the cities of Italy, earlier 
than anywhere else, a keen and cultivated intellectual 
society formed itself, which was characterized by many 
modern traits, and which prepared the way for the re- 
vival of learning. 

In Germany a considerable number of cities in fa- 
vored localities reached the same position of local inde- 
pendence as those of Italy, and for the same reason — 
their immediate dependence upon a nominal national 
government which had lost all power to interfere in the 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 297 

management of local affairs. There existed, then, in Ger- 
many, as in Italy, permanently independent little city 
states regulating their own affairs under a republican 
government. Many of these continued independent into 
modern times, and three of them — Liibeck, Hamburg, 
and Bremen — are at present states of the federal empire 
of Germany. 

Many of these cities were, however, in the end, to 
undergo the same fate which befell the French cities, 
and to be absorbed into some neighboring centralized 
state founded upon a feudal territory. But these states 
were formed in Germany only at a relatively late date, 
some of the most extensive of them not until after the 
middle ages, and there was no one of them, at whatever 
time formed, large enough to include within its govern- 
ment the circle of commercial territory in which the cit- 
ies were interested. It happened, therefore, in Germany, 
that the cities which succeeded in preserving their inde- 
pendence were thrown upon their own resources for pro- 
tection, and were obliged themselves to repress the evils 
which a national government would naturally have held 
in check, and which even a forming central power, like 
that of France, was able to deal with in a constantly 
increasing degree. As a consequence of this there ap- 
pears in Germany a political result of ,the commercial 
development which is not seen in the same form else- 
where — the city leagues. The Italian cities united to- 
gether in the Lombard League, in their struggle against 
the Hohenstaufen emperors, but that was a league for 
mutual defence against a special danger, and it did not 
have the permanence nor the political character of the 
German leagues. 

The greatest of these leagues was the Hanseatic, formed 
during the thirteenth century and reaching its height in 
the fourteenth. Its power extended over the whole north 
of Germany and into all the countries bordering on the 



298 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

Baltic and North Seas. Almost a nation itself in its or- 
ganization and resources, it dealt with states on equal 
terms and protected its commercial rights with great 
fleets. The League of the Rhine Cities, almost as power- 
ful, and perhaps even of earlier formation, was an equally 
effective agent in keeping the peace and protecting com- 
merce, within the range of its influence. So efficient an 
instrument in preserving order did the league prove itself 
to be that at the very close of the middle ages the free 
cities of southern Germany entered into an alliance of 
the sort with the princes, who had succeeded in forming 
states in that part of the country — the so-called Swa- 
bian League — to put down disorder, caused mostly by 
the despairing and desperate efforts of the small nobles 
to preserve their political independence. 

In England the city never played so important a part 
in public affairs as on the Continent, and the reason for 
this fact is easy to be found. In England, though the 
feudal system was established as completely as on the 
Continent, as a matter of organization, the state never 
split into fragments — the law was always national law. 
The central government was always strong and had all 
parts of the state in hand, and the improvement of that 
government was an orderly and natural process of growth, 
in which all parts of the community shared alike, no one 
part needed to be uprooted and destroyed by the others. 
The existence of a definite machinery of free local self- 
government — the township or the hundred organization 
— furnished as ready a means by which the city could 
secure control of its own affairs as the forms of the feu- 
dal system gave to the commune in France. But this 
very fact incorporated it completely in the organization 
of the shire or the state, of which the township or the 
hundred formed a regular part, and prevented the En- 
glish city from establishing a perfect independence like 
the Italian or German city, or even from coming so near 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 299 

to it as did the communes of France. In the long strug- 
gle for English liberty the boroughs were to play an hon- 
orable part, but they did it, not as independent powers, 
but as corporate elements of the state. 

Translated into other terms, this increase of commerce 
and development of the cities becomes the rise of the 
Third Estate into a position of influence and power, be- 
side the other two. This is a fact of the utmost impor- 
tance in the general history of civilization, because this 
progress once begun, though it was to be here and there 
very slow, and sometimes even ended, to all appearance, 
in reality never ceased, and our own time is character- 
ized by its complete triumph and the practical absorption, 
both economically and politically, of the other two es- 
tates in the third. 

All the middle ages may have recognized the existence 
of three classes in the population — a working class be- 
sides the clergy and the nobles — but politically and in all 
practical concerns no account was taken of this third 
class until it began to possess wealth. The First Estate, 
the clergy, with the Second Estate, the nobles, controlled 
everything, and no one outside their ranks had any voice 
in affairs. 

With the growth of commerce this condition of things 
began to be changed. Wealth meant power. The ready 
money of the merchant was as effective a weapon as the 
sword of the nobles, or the spiritual arms of the church. 
Very speedily, also, the men of the cities began to seize 
upon one of the weapons which up to this time had been 
the exclusive possession of the church, and one of the main 
sources of its power — knowledge and intellectual training. 
With these two weapons in its hands, wealth and knowl- 
edge, the Third Estate forced its way into influence, and 
compelled the other two to recognize it as a partner with 
themselves in the management of public concerns. 



300 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

The formation of the Third Estate must not be re- 
garded as the formation of the "people" in the modern 
sense of that word. This distinction is very important 
historically and one that should be made clear if possible. 

According to our modern democratic ideas the "peo- 
ple" includes the whole body of inhabitants in the coun- 
try. If we say, " the will of the people controls the state," 
we mean the will of the mass of the population without 
distinction of classes. But such an idea would have been 
impossible even to the end of the middle ages. It would 
have been foreign to all its notions. Even within the 
self-governing cities the governments were not demo- 
cratic, and they tended, in most cases, to become more 
and more aristocratic, and the distinction between "patri- 
cians" and common people was as clearly drawn as out- 
side their wails, though based upon different grounds. 

The rise of the Third Estate did not mean the forma- 
tion of the "people." It was the first step towards it, 
but, in the middle ages, it went no farther than to bring 
up beside the other classes, who had heretofore controlled 
the state, and who continued to retain their distinct ex- 
istence as classes, and nearly everywhere kept a prepon- 
derance of influence, another class, clearly marked within 
itself as a class and clearly separated from them. Beyond 
this the middle ages did not go, except in Italy, where 
something almost like the "people" may be seen, in some 
of the cities, though in England, also, one very decisive 
step towards modern times was taken in the association 
of the smaller nobles with the "commons." The govern- 
ment which resulted from the rise of the Third Estate 
was a government of classes and separate interests, with 
the characteristic weaknesses of such a government, and 
unless reinforced from other sources presented no serious 
obstacle to the growth of absolutism. 

The Third Estate was itself divided into two well- 
marked divisions— the city population and the laboring 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 301 

class of the country districts. This distinction was so 
clearly marked that in some countries the peasants were 
reckoned as forming a Fourth Estate. The agricultural 
laborers of Europe can hardly be said to have gained 
political rights or any share in the government at the 
close of the middle ages; indeed, with insignificant ex- 
ceptions, and with the exception of some of the American 
colonies, it was reserved for the nineteenth century to 
make this advance. The Third Estate, considered as hav- 
ing an influence on public affairs, was in reality only the 
burgher class. This class was, however, as a matter of 
fact, drawn largely from the country population, though 
the nucleus around which it gathered was in all cases, 
except in the new towns, the city population which had 
descended from earlier times. As commerce increased, 
means of employment naturally multiplied. Manufac- 
tures developed; new lines of industry and of mechanical 
work were opened. An easier and more advantageous 
life was to be had in the cities than in the country, and 
a current set constantly into them of the more enterpris- 
ing and better situated peasants to take advantage of 
the more favorable conditions there, and to reinforce the 
Third Estate. The cities themselves encouraged this 
tendency, as sometimes also did the suzerain, or the sov- 
ereign of the city, by the grant of his protection to im- 
migrants. The drift from the country had its reflex in- 
fluence also upon the people remaining there, by securing 
them better treatment or even special privileges from 
lords anxious to retain the peasants on their lands. 

In the case of the laboring classes of the country the 
end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the mid- 
dle ages had seen the slave transformed into the serf. 
This change consisted in giving certain limited rights to 
a class which had before possessed no rights whatever. 
A serf is a slave to whom a few but not all the rights 
of a freeman have been granted. He has taken the first 



302 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

step towards becoming a freeman. That he is chained 
to the soil is at the beginning as much of an advantage 
as it is later a disadvantage, for it secures him a home, 
a family, and certain limited rights of property, none of 
which can be taken away from him. It was perfectly 
natural that in the course of time, as the general condi- 
tions which surrounded the serf improved, the limitations 
upon his right should come to be the main things noticed, 
and that it should be forgotten how very little those limi- 
tations were regarded centuries before in comparison with 
the rights then gained. 

The change to serfdom was accomplished in the later 
empire by economic causes, chiefly by the difficulty of 
getting a sufficient number of agricultural laborers. The 
slavery of Christian men was not entirely extinguished, 
however, though forbidden. It lingered on in various 
ways until the very end of the middle ages. 

In the times which follow the German conquests there 
is to be seen a mixture of phenomena. Exactly opposite 
things seem to be happening at different dates or in dif- 
ferent places at the same date. In some cases freemen 
sink down towards the serf class, and many of those in 
the higher grades of serfdom represent earlier free la- 
borers. Sometimes, on the contrary, the lower classes 
may be seen rising towards the higher, and reinforcing 
from this source the same upper grades. In a general 
view of the whole period we may say that the condition 
of the laborer is, in most particulars, improving; or the 
fact would be, perhaps, more accurately stated in this 
way: that the forms of land tenure and the general eco- 
nomic conditions of the middle ages made it, on the whole, 
easy for the serf who was somewhat more enterprising 
than his class, or who found himself in a better situation, 
to improve his condition and to rise towards the rank of 
a freeman. 

This fact explains the great variety of rights possessed 



THE GROWTH OF COMMERCE AND ITS RESULTS 303 

by the agricultural laborers of a given time in any one 
of the countries of Europe, and as well the great variety 
of legal conditions which can often be found upon a 
single estate. These various gradations of right and of 
tenure represent the intermediate steps or stages through 
which the serf is passing on his way to freedom. On the 
same estate there may be some, perhaps, whose condi- 
tion is hardly to be distinguished from that of slaves, 
others who have a few more rights, others still more, and 
some who are almost indistinguishable from full freemen. 

This second change from serf to free laborer, like the 
earlier one from slave to serf, was determined by economic 
causes, often by the same one indeed, the scarcity of la- 
borers and the consequent willingness of the landlord to 
grant better conditions of tenure in order to gain new 
laborers or to keep his old ones. The change consisted 
almost everywhere in the transformation of vague and 
indefinite personal services into clearly expressed and 
definitely limited services, and these into payments of 
rent, sometimes in produce and then finally in many 
places in money. When a fixed money payment took 
the place of labor services the serf had become a freeman. 1 
It is characteristic of the later part of the middle ages 
that these various forms of servile tenure coexist on the 
same estate, and very frequently in the case of the same 
man, who will be held to render in part services and in 
part rent payments. 

In the more favored parts of Europe this process of 
emancipation was completed by the end of the middle 
ages. In Italy serfdom had disappeared as early, prob- 
ably, as the end of the fourteenth century. In England 

1 In some places, notably in Italy, there were large numbers of emanci- 
pations by charters, which gave religious reasons for Mhe act, or moral con- 
siderations, drawn often from the Roman law, like the natural equality of 
all men. If these are really exceptions to the operation of the causes men- 
tioned in the text, they are not numerous enough to affect the movement 
as a whole. 



304 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the same result was reached, with some exceptions, by 
the beginning of the sixteenth. Of parts of France and 
of Germany the same thing is true. In some of the less 
favorably situated parts of the Continent serfdom or some 
features of serfdom lived on until the revolutionary age 
which opened the nineteenth century. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE FORMATION OF FRANCE 

Wherever the influences which were described in the 
last chapter had an opportunity to work under favorable 
political conditions, only one result was possible — a na- 
tional consciousness began to arise and the national gov- 
ernment began to be more directly an expression of that 
consciousness: governments, in other words, began to 
exist having reality as well as a name to be. The im- 
provement of the intellectual conditions, which will be 
the subject of Chapter XV, rendered also essential service 
in the same direction, in the growth of general intelli- 
gence and the creation of a wider community of ideas. 
But the results which followed an increasing commerce 
had a more direct and immediate influence upon the for- 
mation of state governments than had any outcome of 
the intellectual advance. We have just seen in how many 
directions these results were a direct attack upon the 
older feudal conditions and institutions, and it is natu- 
rally in order now to examine the special efforts which 
were made by the forming governments to take advan- 
tage of these new influences, and in doing so to sketch 
the forms of government and constitution resulting in 
the various states of the time. 

In two of the leading states of Europe governments 
which may be called really national were established — in 
France and England. Their history is consequently of 
greater interest to us and will occupy us most fully. 
One other country, Spain, arrived at a government which 

305 



306 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

embraced the whole territory of the state, but which was 
not supported, as in the other two cases, by a thoroughly 
united national feeling. In neither Italy nor Germany 
was any true general government for the whole state 
established, for reasons which we have already seen; but 
in both cases some interesting political results are to be 
noticed and many indications that a genuine national 
feeling and spirit existed, though unable to express it- 
self through political institutions. In many of the minor 
states which arose in portions of these two countries, 
governments, which were really national in everything 
except extent of territory, were formed. 

In the case of France the great fact at the opening of 
its national history was feudalism. We have seen how 
completely that system prevailed in the France of the 
tenth century, and the prevalence of feudalism meant 
the existence of two fatal obstacles in the way of the 
formation of any efficient national government. It meant 
the geographical subdivision of the country into practi- 
cally independent fragments, and it meant the subdivi- 
sion of the general authority in the same way, so that the 
usual functions of a general government could nojonger 
be exercised throughout the state by the nominal central 
power, but were exercised in fragments by local powers. 
We have seen also how the Capetian dynasty arose out 
of this feudalism itself, and though possessed in theory 
of very extensive powers, had in reality only so much 
power as it could derive from its own family resources. 

These facts indicate clearly enough the twofold task 
which lay before the Capetian dynasty at the beginning 
of its history, and which it performed so faithfully and so 
successfully. It must reconstruct the geographical unity 
of France by bringing all the fragments into which its 
territory had been separated under its own immediate 
control — a task which was to be rendered doubly difficult 



THE FORMATION OF FRANCE 307 

by the fact that several of the largest of these fragments 
were in the possession of a foreign sovereign, the king of 
England. It had, in the second place, to recover the 
prerogatives usurped by the rulers of these fragments so 
that it might itself exercise them in fact as well as possess 
them in theory, and in doing so it must, in great measure, 
create the national institutions through which these func- 
tions of a central government could be exercised. 

The first four Capetian kings, from Hugh Capet to 
Philip I, do not seem to have been altogether unconscious 
of the great problems which they had to solve, but their 
situation was such that they could do but little. The 
first steps were necessarily slow, and it should be consid- 
ered by no means a small contribution to the final result 
that these kings were able to strengthen the hold of the 
Capetian family upon the throne of France, as they un- 
questionably did, to prevent any further loss of royal 
power, and to maintain the respect for the kingship in 
the turbulent society of the time. In certain localities 
where special conditions favored a kind of natural inde- 
pendence there may have been loss rather than gain, as 
in Flanders and Brittany, but on the whole the current 
was in the direction of a stronger monarchy. They con- 
tinued also and confirmed the alliance with the church, 
which had aided so greatly the rise of their family and 
from which it had still so much to gain. In comparison 
with these more general and negative, but not therefore 
unimportant, results, any specific gains which these kings 
made were insignificant. Philip I does not rank in his- 
tory as a very strong or energetic king, but he saw clearly 
enough what was the first necessary step to be taken, the 
consolidation of his own feudal state, the duchy of 
France, and he bequeathed that policy to his successor. 

With Louis VI, the Fat, in 1108, the work was taken 
vigorously and successfully in hand, and the succession 
opens of the great sovereigns of the Capetian house — of 



308 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the sovereigns who may justly be called great in the work 
of constructing France, if not in any wider sense. The 
chief effort of Louis's reign was to overthrow the small 
nobles who were his vassals as duke, and who had been 
making themselves as independent in their smaller terri- 
tories as the great vassals had throughout the greater 
France, and some of whom had brought it to such a pass 
that it was almost impossible for the king to travel with 
freedom from one part of his domain to another. This 
work he practically accomplished, and he centralized the 
duchy to such an extent that later kings had its undivided 
resources to draw upon in the more severe struggle which 
was before them. 

This struggle with the great barons Louis VI also began 
with vigor, though without any very marked success. In 
Flanders, Champagne, and Aquitaine he asserted the 
rights of the king and attempted to maintain them with 
force, and he carried on an almost continuous war with 
his great rival the Duke of Normandy. Earlier Capetian 
kings had recognized the great strength of the dukes of 
Normandy and the importance of having them as allies 
or of weakening their power as opportunity offered, but 
the accession of Duke William to the English throne in 
1066 had greatly increased the danger from this source. 
The continual quarrels in the English royal family through 
the whole period furnished an opportunity which could 
be turned to advantage by the French kings, and Louis 
supported the son of Robert against Henry I, though in 
the end unsuccessfully. The position of the English in 
France was stronger, indeed, at the close of Louis's reign 
than at the beginning, by reason of the marriage of Henry's 
daughter Matilda with the Count of Anjou, who had 
been Louis's ally. The great gain of Louis's life was the 
centralization of the duchy and the decidedly stronger 
position which the king had gained throughout all cen- 
tral France. 



THE FORMATION OF FRANCE 309 

In the next reign, that of Louis VII, the territory held 
by the English kings upon the Continent was extended so 
widely that it threatened the very existence of an inde- 
pendent France under the Capetian house. The wide 
fiefs which had been brought together by the dukes of 
Aquitaine, covering nearly a quarter of the present ter- 
ritory of France, fell to an heiress, Eleanor, on the death 
of her father, William X, the last duke. Louis VI had 
not neglected the opportunity and had secured the hand 
of Eleanor for his son Louis. But there existed between 
this pair, apparently, a complete incompatibility of tem- 
per. Eleanor had little respect for Louis, and her con- 
duct was not altogether proper, at least not in the eyes 
of her somewhat austere husband, and on his return from 
the second crusade the marriage was annulled. But such 
a prize did not long remain unsought, and in the same 
year she married young Henry of Anjou, son of Matilda, 
who already was in possession of all the English provinces 
on the Continent, and soon after succeeded to the English 
throne. By this marriage the whole of western France 
was united under Henry II, considerably more than one- 
third its present area, and a far larger portion than was 
directly under the control of the Capetian king. But 
these lands were only loosely held together, and they 
were feudally subject to Louis. It is interesting to notice 
that Henry was not willing to lead his army in person 
against his suzerain when Louis had thrown himself into 
Toulouse to defend that city against his attack, the feudal 
theory proving itself so strong even in such a case. But 
Louis could make no headway against so large a power, 
though he tried to do what he could and aided the rebel- 
lious sons of Henry against their father. 

His successor, Philip Augustus, made it the great ob- 
ject of his reign to enlarge the royal domain, that is, the 
part of France directly under the king's government. 
The domain was enlarged when, for any reason, one of 



310 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the great barons, a count or a duke, had given up his 
territory to the king. Then there was no longer stand- 
ing between the rear vassals and the king a great lord 
who held the territory as his own little principality, more 
or less completely closed against the royal interference. 
The king had taken his place, and the small nobles of 
the territory were brought into immediate dependence 
upon him, so that he had now possession both of the 
rights of the old count or duke, and also of the more 
extensive rights of the national sovereign, which might 
at last be exercised. Sometimes, also, the kings got pos- 
session of rear fiefs before the county or duchy was finally 
absorbed, and in both these ways, though mainly by the 
first, the new kingdom of France was forming and the 
royal power of the Capetian family was extending itself 
over the national territory by the disappearance of the 
great barons who had been its peers at the beginning of 
its history. 

The long reign of Philip Augustus was a time of most 
rapid progress in this geographical reconstruction of 
France. The county of Artois, the king secured by his 
marriage; the counties of Vermandois and Amiens soon 
after as the result of a disputed succession. These ac- 
cessions greatly enlarged the domain towards the north- 
east. But the great problem was to recover the lands 
held by the English, and at this Philip labored all his 
life. The constant quarrels in the English royal family 
— of Henry II with his sons, of Richard and John, of 
John and Arthur, and finally between John and the En- 
glish barons — greatly aided his efforts, and Philip was al- 
ways on the side opposed to the reigning king. Before 
the reign of John he had made only very slight gains, 
the most important being the suzerainty of the county 
of Auvergne, which Henry II had been forced, just before 
his death, to transfer to Philip. But Philip's abandon- 
ment of the third crusade, while it was still unfinished, 



THE FORMATION OF FRANCE 311 

and his return to France to take advantage of the ab- 
sence of Richard are evidences of the power of political 
motives over his mind, and of his superior realization 
of the duties of his office, as compared with the English 
king. 

Immediately after the accession of John came the op- 
portunity for which Philip had waited. In 1200, John 
deprived the heir of one of his vassals, the eldest son of 
Hugh, Count of La Marche, of his promised bride and 
married her himself. The count took arms with the 
support of other nobles of Poitou, and appealed for jus- 
tice to John's suzerain, King Philip. Philip summoned 
John to appear before his feudal court and make answer. 
When the court met, early in 1202, John did not appear, 
and sentence was pronounced that he had failed to meet 
his feudal obligations, and had therefore forfeited all the 
fiefs which he held of the king of France. 1 Philip pro- 
ceeded to execute the sentence immediately by force of 
arms. He had the feudal law clearly on his side. John 
further prejudiced his case by his murder of Arthur in 
the next year. He was hampered also by many enemies, 
and by treachery among his vassals, and though he may 
have been physically brave and mentally able, he was 
morally a coward, and his defence against Philip's attack 
was weak in the extreme. Speedily all of Normandy, 
Maine, Anjou, and Touraine, and parts of Poitou and 
Saintonge, were in Philip's possession, never to be recov- 
ered as fiefs by the English. The great victory of Bou- 
vines, which Philip gained in 12 14, over the Emperor Otto 
IV, and the Count of Flanders, allies of John, raised the 
prestige of the king to its highest point, and excited a 
popular enthusiasm which may almost be called national, 

1 The researches of M. Ch. Bemont — see two articles in the Revue His- 
torique, vol. XXXII — have made it certain that the condemnation of John 
was the result of the appeal to the king by the nobles of Poitou, and not 
of the murder of Arthur, as formerly supposed. Numerous later studies of 
the question have not seriously shaken M. Bemont's conclusions. 



312 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

The reign of Philip Augustus had multiplied the area of 
the royal domain by three, had strengthened the position 
of the king beyond the possibility of rivalry or even suc- 
cessful resistance from any single baron and had given it 
the sanction of uninterrupted success. 

The reign of his son, Louis VIII, lasted only three years, 
but it made no break in the line of advance. More ter- 
ritory was recovered from the English, including the im- 
portant city of La Rochelle, and the hold of the king on 
southeastern France was strengthened. 

With Louis IX, St. Louis, there followed another long 
reign, and another period of enormous advance, relatively 
not so great in territory as under Philip Augustus, but 
one which left the royal power, at its close, institutionally 
much farther along on the road to absolutism. 

Louis IX was only eleven years old at his father's 
death, but his mother, Blanche of Castile, who assumed 
the regency, was worthy to be a sovereign in the Cape- 
tian line. The great barons, however, had now begun 
to realize to what end events were carrying them, and to 
see, as they had to some extent before this date, that 
their only hope of resisting the policy of the crown was 
to be found in concerted action. They consequently took 
advantage of Louis's minority to form combinations 
among themselves to deprive the queen of the regency, 
and in intent, to check the advance of the royal power 
by arms. The skill of the queen-regent, however, de- 
feated all their plans, and a similar result attended an- 
other attempt of the sort after Louis reached his major- 
ity. All these unsuccessful efforts in the end really aided 
the royal cause. In 1 2 59, Louis made a treaty with Henry 
III, of England, by which for certain small fiefs added 
to his land in the southwest of France, Henry abandoned 
all claims to Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Poitou, and 
agreed to hold Guienne as a fief from Louis. A treaty of 
the year before with the king of Aragon had made a simi- 



THE FORMATION OF FRANCE 313 

lar division of disputed lands in the southeast. Louis 
also profited by the results of the bloody extermination 
of the Albigenses which had been begun in the reign of 
Philip Augustus. The attempt of Raymond VII, Count 
of Toulouse, to better his condition by joining one of 
the coalitions of barons against the king had resulted in 
his losing some of his lands to the king, and he was 
obliged to renew his consent to the earlier treaty, by 
which the king's brother, Alfonso, Count of Poitiers, was 
to succeed to Toulouse at Raymond's death. This hap- 
pened in 1249. In the year after Louis's death Alfonso 
himself died without heirs, and the great county of Tou- 
louse was joined to the crown. 

To offset somewhat these great accessions of territory 
under the direct control of the king, the system of ap- 
panages must be noted, begun, in a large way, by Louis 
VIII to provide for his younger sons. The provinces, 
however, which were separated by this arrangement from 
the domain and made to depend feudally upon some 
prince of the royal house, were not ceded to him in full 
sovereignty, and the system did not lead to the forma- 
tion of a new- series of independent principalities, nor 
prove as dangerous to the royal authority as might seem 
probable. 

Louis's son, Philip III, though without originality of 
his own or strength of character, followed faithfully the 
example set by his father, and was well served by officers 
trained in that school. The great fiefs of Toulouse and 
Champagne were added to the domain, the jurisdiction 
of the royal courts enlarged, the development of a su- 
preme court advanced, the king's authority enforced in 
every way possible in the great fiefs which remained, 
the independence of the communes weakened, and quietly 
and without exciting open opposition the royal authority 
strengthened in all directions. The growth of a strong 
central government was now so well begun, in other words, 



314 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

that it could go on almost of itself under a sovereign who 
was able to do but little to direct the process. 

The regular alternation which seems curiously enough 
to prevail in the Capetian dynasty during most of the 
medieval portion of its history brings us, with the acces- 
sion of Philip IV, to another strong king, and to an epoch 
of almost revolutionary progress. But this was almost 
wholly institutional. From this time on to the close of 
the long English war, no great accession of territory was 
made, though many small ones were, like the seizure of 
Lyons by Philip IV. France was now almost constructed 
geographically. The great central portion was under the 
direct government of the king, except so far as the ap- 
panages interfered with this. Guienne, Brittany, Bur- 
gundy, and Flanders were the only great fiefs still remain- 
ing independent, and, with the exception of Guienne, 
they remained so until the end of the middle ages, and 
the most of Flanders was never recovered. To these 
must be added, to complete the later French territory, 
Provence, which, though not a fief of France, was held 
by a long series of French princes and was finally ab- 
sorbed by France under Louis XL 

The early deaths of the three sons of Philip the Fair, 
and the exclusion of their daughters from the succession 
by the principle which was later called the Salic law, 
make a natural close for the first period of Capetian his- 
tory. With the immediately following accession of the 
house of Valois the Hundred Years' War with the En- 
glish begins. 

The great increase of territory directly subject to the 
control of the king during the period which closes with 
the death of Charles IV, the last of the direct line, had 
necessitated a corresponding development of the institu- 
tional side of the monarchy to provide the means re- 
quired to exercise the real government which became 
more and more possible. The reign of Philip Augustus 



THE FORMATION OF FRANCE 315 

marked an epoch in this direction, as it did in the geo- 
graphical extension of the royal power, and that of St. 
Louis was even more distinguished for institutional than 
for territorial growth. 

The problem of administration, of making the central 
power effectively felt in all the details of local govern- 
ment throughout the domain, was the earliest which de- 
manded solution. The older administrative agent, the 
prevot, served very well when the domain was small, but 
was inadequate in the changed situation. He was wholly 
feudal in character, administered a very small territory, 
and was not well under control. 

In the bailli Philip Augustus developed a most effec- 
tive agent of the central power. Free from feudal influ- 
ence, appointed by the king and entirely dependent upon 
him, transferred at intervals from one region to another, 
he was held under a strict control. In the district to 
which he was appointed, he directly represented the 
royal authority in the local enforcement of its regulations 
of all kinds, and in the care of its financial interests, and 
also in military and even judicial matters, and formed a 
close bond of connection between the central government 
and every locality. Besides the special functions of this 
new officer, he had the general duty of looking after all 
the interests of the king, and of extending his power 
and domain whenever opportunity offered. In this direc- 
tion the services of the baillis to the crown were as effec- 
tive as in their strictly official capacity, and not infre- 
quently their zeal in interfering with the local nobility to 
the king's advantage carried them on faster and farther 
than the kings thought it wise to follow. In the great 
territories afterwards added to the domain in the south, 
this officer was known as the senechal, but had the 
same duties with some differences of detail. The super- 
vision of the central government over all parts of the 
state was carried a step further by St. Louis in his more 



316 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

regular employment of enqueteurs, officers occasionally 
used before and corresponding in duties to the missi of 
Charlemagne. Intended to oversee the conduct of the 
local officers and to insure justice, they became, under 
the stronger government of Philip the Fair, agents of 
royal oppression and exaction. 

Probably the most difficult task which the kings had 
to perform in creating the state was to establish national 
courts superior to the local and feudal courts in baronial 
hands, and, in connection with them, to enforce peace 
and good order — an orderly and judicial settlement of 
disputes instead of an appeal to force. The minute regu- 
lations with which the feudal law itself, as it began to 
be formed, had surrounded the practice of private war, 
mimicking on a small scale the provisions of international 
law and even more formal in character, are evidences of 
an attempt on the part of feudalism itself to escape from 
some of the worst evils of unchecked license. The Truce 
of God was able to aid in this direction during a time when 
the church was the only general power capable of enforc- 
ing the requirements of such a truce. But it was not 
possible for the evil to be entirely done away with, and 
good order to be really maintained, until the general 
causes, whose operation we noticed in the last chapter, 
had finally transformed society and created a strong de- 
mand for security. Then they could give the central 
government an effective support that would enable it to 
enforce obedience to the law. This transformation of 
society was by no means complete in the last half of the 
thirteenth century, but it had advanced so far that its 
influence can be distinctly seen, and the operation of the 
royal courts may begin to be called national. 

The original court of the king, the curia regis, was an 
assembly of court officials, vassals, and magnates sub- 
ject to the king, which met at short intervals, at his sum- 
mons, to perform a great variety of functions — judicial, 



THE FORMATION OF FRANCE 317 

advisory, and semi-legislative — functions which were to 
be performed after a time, with the increasing complex- 
ity of government, by separate bodies differentiated from 
this original court. Under the early Capetian kings the 
portion of France under its actual jurisdiction was very 
small, and its means of enforcing any decree were very 
limited. In the period which follows, down to the reign 
of St. Louis, the wider extension of the royal power af- 
fected the court in two directions. In one there is to be 
seen a constantly increasing respect paid to the court on 
the part of the feudal lords, and a growing tendency to 
submit to its decrees, a tendency which, though not by 
any means universal as yet, was marked enough to be 
a sure sign of the increasing respect paid to the king. 
In another direction, in the court itself, there is evident 
the gradual formation from its members of a small body 
constantly present and especially devoted to the study 
of the law — a result which followed naturally from the 
increasing business of the court. 

This latter fact is the first indication of the next im- 
portant advance. From the reign of St. Louis the judi- 
cial business of the court was regularly in the hands of 
a permanent body of specially trained men, selected by 
the king, and this body now began to be called the Par- 
lement. The lords and high clergy 'still attended occa- 
sionally, when especially summoned, in cases which par- 
ticularly concerned their own interests, but the supreme 
court of the kingdom had now been separated from the 
earlier general body, the curia regis, and had begun its 
separate development. 

Along with this evolution of the supreme court there 
went also a great increase of respect and of business in 
the case of the subordinate national courts, those held 
by the prcvois and the baillis. There are, also, two other 
facts to be noticed in the same connection, as of the ut- 
most importance in the national centralization. One is 



318 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the introduction of a system of appeals, and the other, 
the revived study of the Roman law. 

The development of a series of royal courts might serve 
a good purpose in centralizing the domain, even if their 
action were confined to that, but would be of little use 
in binding all France together, if the feudal courts of 
the great fiefs, which were still left, remained supreme 
and independent. Under St. Louis and his son, the right 
of appeal, which had existed before in some parts of the 
kingdom, was definitely established for all France — the 
right of appeal to the royal courts, local and supreme, 
from all feudal courts of whatever grade, including those 
of the greatest and most independent lords, like the king 
of England in his capacity as duke of Guienne. 1 

That the establishment of this right of appeal from 
themselves to the king revolutionized the whole situation 
and involved in reality the total destruction of their 
political independence, the barons do not seem to have 
clearly perceived; but that they certainly resisted this 
advance of the royal power with some determination is 
evident from the numerous ordinances which were made 
in the following period against the means they were em- 
ploying to maintain the independence of their courts. 
But their power of resistance was greatly undermined 
by the theory of the kingship, which had always existed 
in the feudal law, and which was now greatly developed 
under the influence of the Roman law. If the king was 
considered to be the supreme source of law and justice, 
and if the right of the baron to hold a court was only a 
delegated right, then there was no ground on which an 
appeal to the royal courts could be denied. 

It was in the thirteenth century, especially in its latter 

1 The supreme feudal courts in some of the great fiefs, as in Normandy, 
Champagne, and Toulouse, were allowed to continue, their judges, under 
the new arrangement, being members of the Parlement of Paris sent for the 
purpose; but they continued not as independent courts, but as provincial 
parlements, clearly incorporated in the national judiciary system. 



THE FORMATION OF FRANCE 319 

half, that the revived study of the Roman law began 
to have a decided practical influence upon the formation 
of the modern state and modern law. We cannot enter 
here into the special influence which it had in the field 
of law itself, less decisive in France than in Germany, 
but far more extensive everywhere on the Continent than 
in England. It is its influence upon institutions and the 
development of government which we must regard. 

The channel through which the principles of the Roman 
law were brought at this time into an immediate influ- 
ence upon the institutional side of the national growth, 
was the position obtained by the professional body of 
trained lawyers, now beginning to be formed. These 
men were soon employed as judges in the subordinate 
courts, and gradually made their way into the Parlement 
itself, and thus that body became more and more sep- 
arated as a permanent institution exercising the judicial 
functions of the curia regis practically alone. And along 
another line also the same connection of the Roman law 
with the state was made through the influence of the 
lawyers in the other body which was just now forming 
from the curia regis, the Estates General. 

It was by infusing its spirit into the progress which 
had begun, and directing it to certain ideals, rather than 
as a source of actual institutions that the Roman law af- 
fected the result. It was the law of a thoroughly cen- 
tralized state. Its spirit was that of a complete absolut- 
ism. All its principles and maxims looked to the king 
as the centre and source of the whole institutional life 
of the state. The supreme right to judge, to administer, 
to legislate, and to tax was possessed by the sovereign. 
This was the theory of the state which the lawyers were 
drawing from the Roman law everywhere, even, to some 
extent at least, in England. As the practical manage- 
ment of public affairs of all sorts passed more and more 
into the hands of men trained in these ideas, and as the 



320 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

Roman law gradually came to be regarded as the con- 
trolling law in all new cases, the actual facts were made 
to conform more and more exactly to the theory. This 
new influence was, thus, a tremendous reinforcement to 
the primitive theory of the kingship which had come down 
to the Capetians from the earlier dynasties and which had 
lived through the age of feudal disintegration, a theory 
which had been itself formed after the conquest very 
largely on the Roman model. But it must be remem- 
bered that it was not now mere theory. The influence 
exerted upon the growth of the state was far more de- 
cisive than that of any mere theory, for it was the con- 
trolling ideal of the men who were most active in shaping 
the new institutions. 1 It has been said of this influence: 
"It was this more than all other causes combined which 
effected the transformation of the feudal medieval sov- 
ereignty into the absolute monarchies of the seventeenth 
century," 2 and one feels hardly justified in calling the 
statement an exaggeration. 

During the last part of this period three other insti- 
tutions of great importance began their growth, though 
their great development was to lie in the time of the 

x Two points may be emphasized in connection with this discussion of 
French judicial institutions, as facts of the utmost importance in account- 
ing for the different results in France and England. One of them is this, 
that a national system of law and national courts had never disappeared in 
England as completely as they had in France. They did not have to be 
reconstructed almost de novo under the influence of any theories, and it was 
not true of England, as it was of France, that the chief dependence for a 
common law was upon a confused and contradictory local and customary 
law which was totally unfit to grow into a general national law with the 
rapidity necessary to keep pace with geographical extension of the royal 
power. From early in the reign of Henry II the royal courts rapidly built 
up a common law which was truly national. The other fact is that France 
did not have so complete a system of local self-government as England, a 
system based upon different ideas from those of the Roman law, and able 
to train individual men for the public service and the whole nation in the 
exercise of liberty. This fact was, however, of more decisive influence in 
the later stages of French history than at the point we have now reached. 

2 The New York Nation, vol. XL, p. 487. 



THE FORMATION OF FRANCE 32 1 

English war which followed. These were the standing 
army, the system of national taxation, and the Estates 
General. 

With the enlargement of the domain, and the more 
important and more distant wars which followed, the 
feudal levies and the older general levy proved them- 
selves insufficient and less to be depended upon than in 
earlier times. Before the reign of Philip Augustus there 
are instances of the employment of paid soldiers, and 
their use constantly increased. With their employment, 
and the other increasing expenses of the state, the neces- 
sity arose for a larger income than the feudal revenues 
supplied. Some points connected with the origin of gen- 
eral taxation are not clear, but the first steps towards it 
seem to have been taken in the introduction, under Philip 
Augustus, of a money composition for military service 
not performed. During the English wars the method of 
this tax changed somewhat. The kings of that time were 
not always in a position to maintain all that their pred- 
ecessors had gained, and the Estates General attempted 
to compel a recognition of their right to grant a tax 
before it could be legally collected, but without final suc- 
cess. The right of the king to impose taxes was in the 
end recognized. It was not until the close of the Hun- 
dred Years' War, in the middle of the fifteenth century, 
that these two things were definitely established, a regu- 
larly organized standing army, and an equally well or- 
ganized and permanent system of taxation, imposed by 
the king and collected throughout the kingdom by his 
agents. It can be seen at once that when this point was 
reached the central government was independent of the 
feudal system. It had recovered from its vassals two of 
its most important functions, the loss of which in the 
ninth and tenth centuries had forced it to submit to the 
feudal regime. The failure of the Estates General to 
make good their claim to a right to vote the taxes had 



322 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

rendered the crown independent also of anything that 
may be called the people, and with its assumption, in 
addition, of the right of legislation, it became the only 
factor in the government. The absolute monarchy was 
complete in outline though not yet worked out in all 
details. 

The institutions which we have been considering down 
to this point are all institutions of centralization. Their 
tendency was to increase very greatly the power of the 
king, to undermine all forms of local independence, and 
to bring the control of public matters of every kind more 
and more completely into the king's hands. Now we 
come to the beginning of an institution which contained 
within itself a possibility of most serious danger for this 
growing absolutism. It is the Estates General — States 
General — the appearance, or reappearance, of a public 
assembly having legislative functions. 

Leaving one side the uncertain and not yet sufficiently 
investigated question as to the exact character in differ- 
ent countries of the earlier institution into which the rep- 
resentatives of the cities were now admitted, it is clear 
that in all the states of Europe there was such an insti- 
tution already in existence. The king's vassals and the 
magnates of the realm, lay and ecclesiastical, came to- 
gether at his summons — the clergy meeting sometimes, 
though by no means frequently, by themselves — to per- 
form without distinguishing between them a variety of 
functions as occasion demanded, sometimes judicial, to de- 
cide cases that arose under the feudal law, and to deter- 
mine what customs should be recognized as having the 
force of law, or in what way they should be changed, and 
to give advice in new cases. These last were acts which 
would correspond most nearly to legislation of anything 
during the feudal period, when formal legislation seems to 
have been wanting, except for enactments in the form of 
royal edicts which were occasionally issued with the con- 



THE FORMATION OF FRANCE 323 

sent of the assembly. Into this body, representatives of 
the Third Estate were now admitted, in all the leading 
countries of Europe, and it gradually assumed a more defi- 
nite organization and clearer legislative functions. France 
was the last of the larger states to take this step; the 
Spanish states of Aragon and Castile were the first, soon 
after the middle of the twelfth century; Sicily followed 
in 1232, Germany in 1255, England in 1265, and France 
in 1302. Instances of the appearance of representatives 
of the towns in the earlier body may be found in some 
cases before, but the definite beginning of the new institu- 
tion was at the dates given. 

The special occasion which led to the creation of this 
new institution is itself significant of the progress which 
the royal authority had made. One of the most impor- 
tant resources of the early Capetians had been the wealth 
of the church. But they had drawn from this source, in 
the way of a general levy on the revenues of ecclesiastics, 
only with the consent of the pope, granted in each case 
for some object of which the pope approved. Now Philip 
the Fair felt himself strong enough to dispense with this 
consent, and to demand that the clergy should be sub- 
ject, like other classes, to the state's rapidly forming tax 
system. The pope took up at once the defence of his 
rights, and the conflict, begun on the question of taxation, 
rapidly involved a great variety of points concerning the 
position of virtual political independence within the state, 
which the church asserted for itself. Upon some one or 
other of these points all the strong Capetian kings — Louis 
VI, Philip Augustus, and St. Louis — had come into col- 
lision with the papacy. Now the state was so nearly 
centralized that the war was waged on all these issues at 
once, and seemed to involve the whole relation of the 
church to the state. 

It was most likely for its general effect, to make an 
imposing display of the fact that the whole nation was 



324 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

behind him in this conflict, or at least that he controlled 
the nation, that Philip called together the first, or the 
first important, Estates General in 1302. 1 In doing this, 
he gave it a really representative character, and a defi- 
niteness of composition which made it a new institution. 
The members of the first two estates, the clergy and the 
nobles, were summoned personally and attended in per- 
son or by proxy. The towns of the whole kingdom, 
summoned through the baillis, elected representatives to 
form the Third Estate. 

It was the power of money which had raised the Third 
Estate to a position in the community somewhere near the 
other two. It was not to obtain their consent to a tax, 
however, that representatives of the Third Estate had in 
this case been summoned to the Estates General. The 
immediate object was to obtain the support of all orders 
for the king's general policy. It was not very long, how- 
ever, before the kings showed themselves disposed to sub- 
mit the question of taxation to the sanction of the Es- 
tates, in order that the collection of it might be easier. 
In doing this, the kings created an extremely dangerous 
weapon against themselves, if the Estates General had 
been able to use it. It was not entirely their fault that 
they were not. The fact that this assembly was at first 
only an advisory body, and had no power of independent 
action, that the rights of legislation and of taxation were 
practically in the hands of the king, was a most serious 
obstacle to the formation of a constitutional monarchy, 

x It is by no means improbable that, in taking this step, Philip was con- 
sciously following the example set by Edward I of England, a year or two 
before, in his contest with Boniface VIII over the feudal relationship of 
Scotland. The evidence is clear that Philip was familiar with these events 
in England, and the idea is an interesting one that the suggestion of the 
French Estates General may have come from the English Parliament. 
Whatever may be true as to this particular occasion, however, the Estates 
General would certainly have been formed before many years. For the 
argument of Edward I in 1279 that the clergy should pay taxes like the 
laity, see Barker, The Dominican Order and Convocation, p. 65. 



THE FORMATION OF FRANCE 325 

but not an absolutely fatal one. The French assembly 
still had within itself the possibilities of the English Par- 
liament. 1 If it could have obtained a solid popular sup- 
port and a leadership that would have commanded gen- 
eral respect, if there had been throughout France a 
general experience and understanding of self-government 
as a reserve fund upon which it could have drawn, it 
might, in all probability, have gained what was gained 
in the sister kingdom. It was the lack of these non- 
institutional and intangible but powerful elements of 
growth that was fatal. 

The epoch of rapid geographical and institutional 
growth under the Capetian kings of the direct line was 
succeeded by a long period of confusion and disaster, in 
which the national development in both these directions 
almost entirely ceased. Soon after the accession of Philip 
VI, the first king of the House of Valois, the Hundred 
Years' War with England began. In its real meaning 
it was a struggle over the last English possessions in 
France. Philip VI had immediately taken up the old 
policy of weakening the English hold on Guienne by in- 
trigue and by every other means at hand, and Edward 
III was not slow to defend himself. It was a result, 
however, of the more truly national character which both 
states had now assumed, that the war involved wider 
issues than in its earlier stages — the question of the su- 
premacy of England over Scotland, and of France over 
Flanders, and finally for a time the dangerous possibility, 

1 The legal sources from which the fundamental and creative principles of 
Magna Carta were drawn in England existed with no important difference 
in France. The whole institutional situation, as the starting-point of later 
constitutional growth, was alike in the two countries except for the stronger 
monarchy, and local self-government in the English shires. These peculiari- 
ties of England, though of great importance as said above, affected the pur- 
pose, spirit, and character of the actors in events, not the institutional 
foundations upon which they built. 



326 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

dangerous alike for England and for France, that the 
English king might actually make good that claim to 
the throne of France which had been advanced at first 
mainly as a war measure. 

The Hundred Years' War opened with a series of dis- 
asters for the French, and of great victories for the En- 
glish, against overwhelming odds, which are in themselves 
suggestive of the difference between the two nations. 
The French armies, still composed chiefly of nobles, their 
contempt for the foot- soldier increased by decisive vic- 
tories over the Flemings recently gained, were filled with 
over-confidence in the face of English armies which seemed 
to be composed almost wholly of footmen. But the En- 
glish foot-soldiers were different men from any that the 
French had met before. They had a sturdy self-reliance, 
and a feeling that they were a match for their noble ene- 
mies which were the outgrowth of their history, recent 
as well as ancient — of a long past which the French had 
once shared with them, but with which, in their military 
system as in other things, the French had broken more 
completely than the English. The result was the battles 
of Crecy and of Poitiers and the anarchy which followed 
in France. 

The king was a prisoner in England; the dauphin was 
young and had not yet begun to display the capacity 
for government which he showed as king; the nearest 
prince of the blood, Charles of Navarre, was a selfish 
schemer; and a feeling had arisen that the king and the 
nobles had proved themselves unfit to deal with the situ- 
ation. There was an opportunity for the Estates General 
to seize upon the control of affairs, and to begin the for- 
mation of a constitution which the leaders of the Third 
Estate quickly recognized. 

The demands which the circumstances enabled them 
to make, some of which were granted them for the time 
being, were closely like the most important principles 



THE FORMATION OF FRANCE 327 

which were being slowly expressed in the English consti- 
tution. They demanded the right to vote the taxes and 
to control their expenditure, that the king's ministers 
should be held responsible to the law, that the adminis- 
tration of justice should be without favor or bribery, and 
that they should have the right to select certain members 
of the king's council, and, also, the concession of period- 
ical meetings for the Estates General, and these demands 
were put somewhat after the English fashion in the form 
of conditions attached to grants of money. 

If these points had been permanently established in 
the French constitution, it would have been the sudden 
creation of a limited monarchy, the introduction in a 
single decade of overpowering restraints upon the king, 
with no history of steady growth behind them. The 
whole history of France had been tending in the oppo- 
site direction, and in this fact was the great weakness of 
such an attempt at revolution, and the main cause of its 
failure. The reform party had no strong leadership, and 
it had no general popular support. The career of Etienne 
Marcel is extremely interesting, but it was not without 
its demagogic features. The nobles lent no support to 
the attempt, and the whole of French history did not 
produce a leader from the middle class like Stephen Lang- 
ton, or one from the nobles like Simon de Montfort. 
The Paris mob also had, in the middle of the fourteenth 
century, too great an influence on the course of events, and 
exhibited at that early date the characteristic features 
and fatal results which have appeared in almost every 
century since, and which are so familiar to us in the 
history of the French Revolution and of the Commune. 
This attempt to form a limited monarchy, and the simi- 
lar one which circumstances again allowed in 1413, met 
with no final success, and the growth of the absolute 
monarchy went on, delayed, but not changed in character. 

With the next king, Charles V, the Wise, a strong and 



328 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

skilful king again succeeded a weak one, and the royal 
power recovered its losses and made new progress. When 
he had well prepared for it, he renewed the English war, 
which had been closed for a time by the treaty of Bre- 
tigny, and, by wisely avoiding pitched battles, he wearied 
out his enemy and recovered nearly all Guienne. He 
enforced the right of appeal to the national courts, for- 
bade private war, enlarged greatly the paid army, avoided 
meeting the Estates General, and strengthened the king's 
hold upon the taxing power, and made further progress 
in getting its collection into the hands of royal officers. 
The right of the king to decree a new tax not consented 
to by those who were to pay it does not seem to have 
been yet recognized; but the consent was obtained from 
no regular body, sometimes from assemblies approaching 
in character to the Estates General, sometimes from pro- 
vincial estates, sometimes from cities, and when once 
granted the tax was collected permanently without a new 
grant, and was even increased by the king with no con- 
sent asked, and in this way France was gradually brought 
to regard the right of taxation as a prerogative of the 
king's. 

After Charles V came the long reign of the weak and 
insane Charles VI, filled with confusion and with civil 
contests between the utterly selfish princes of the blood 
and their adherents, and closed with the almost fatal 
triumph of Henry V of England. 

The son of Charles VI, Charles the Victorious, was the 
last king of France whose reign can be said to have been 
wholly in the middle ages and occupied entirely with the 
old problems. His place was created for him by the 
great popular movement to which Joan of Arc gave 
leadership, and which reveals to us in the clearest light 
the depth of the national feeling which had now come 
into existence in France. By this the English were ex- 
pelled, to be prevented from ever returning by their own 



THE FORMATION OF FRANCE 329 

civil War of the Roses, and by the wholly changed in- 
ternational conditions which confronted the new mon- 
archy of the Tudors at the close of that war. But if 
Charles VII did not make his own place, he knew how to 
occupy it when it had been made for him. The finances 
were brought into good condition, the army was thor- 
oughly organized, the state made independent of the feu- 
dal levies, and the right of the king to impose taxes finally 
established. 

The nobles did not allow these concluding steps in the 
progress to absolutism to be taken without protest and 
combinations to prevent them, but their greatest effort, 
under the lead of princes of the royal house, was made 
under the next king, Louis XI, and when he had suc- 
ceeded in breaking up the League of the Public Weal the 
last really dangerous resistance to the royal power was 
overcome. Louis followed the same policy as his father, 
and at the close of his reign the absolute monarchy was 
complete in all essential particulars. A last trace of in- 
stitutional check upon the legislative right of the sov- 
ereign remained, until a little later, in the power of the 
supreme court — the Parlement — to reject a royal edict in 
whole or in part — the rights of registration and of remon- 
strance — and a few other finishing touches to the struc- 
ture of royal absolutism were left to be made in the 
sixteenth century and by Richelieu and Mazarin. But 
when the king had gathered into his hands the uncon- 
trolled right to legislate, to tax, 1 and to maintain a stand- 
ing army, the process of centralization was in all essentials 
finished, and the king was the state as really as in the 
case of Louis XIV. 

In the reign of Louis XI, also, territorial acquisitions 

1 Philip de Comines, writing in the reign of Charles VIII, recognizes the 
importance of this point. He denies that the king has any right of taxa- 
tion without the consent of those who pay, and says that England is the 
best governed of the countries of his time. See especially Bk. V, chap. XIX. 



330 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

were begun again, the duchy of Burgundy was seized on 
the death of Charles the Bold, and the county of Pro- 
vence, which lay, not in France, but in the old kingdom 
of Burgundy, was annexed — a partial compensation for 
the loss of Flanders, which now passed to the House of 
Hapsburg. In the next reign the last of the great fiefs 
acquired, Brittany, was brought in by the marriage of 
Charles VIII with its heiress. 

But the reign of Charles VIII belongs really in mod- 
ern political history. The ambition of the now com- 
pletely formed French nation and of its sovereign for 
foreign conquests, and the attempt of Charles to estab- 
lish the French in Italy, are its leading facts. Louis XI 
had seen the rise of the new interests and the beginning 
of the international combinations which were made to 
secure them, but he was still so occupied with the old 
problems that he had not been able to take a part in the 
game at all proportionate to the strength of France. 
Now the old problems were settled, so far as they need 
be, and the new interests were taking their place to direct 
the royal policy. 

In some of the later reigns the relics of the feudal 
power were to make new efforts to recover the position 
in the state which they had lost, but these efforts were 
hopeless from the beginning, and feudalism as a political 
power disappeared with the English wars. As a system 
of social rank and of exclusive legal privileges and ex- 
emptions it remained until the French Revolution. The 
kings had carried on a long contest with feudalism, and 
had finally completely overthrown it, but they were not 
hostile to a nobility, and freely bestowed upon the nobles 
pensions and titles and high favor at court as some com- 
pensation for the political independence which had been 
destroyed. 1 

1 It must be remarked, also, as having an important bearing on modern 
French history, that, although a national government had been established 



THE FORMATION OF FRANCE 33 1 

The purpose of this sketch has been not so much to 
give an outline of the institutional history of France 
during these centuries as to make evident, if possible, 
how the central government was continually growing in 
strength and the king becoming with every generation 
more and more independent of the feudal nobles and 
the real ruler of their lands. 

It has been given so much more in detail than the his- 
tory of the other states will be, not merely because of 
the important influence of the absolutism thus formed 
upon all later history, but also because it is, to a consid- 
erable extent, typical of what took place, sooner or later, 
almost everywhere upon the Continent, certainly in re- 
sults if not always in processes. 

and a national feeling created, still very great differences remained between 
the various provinces in law, in methods of legislation, and in taxation, as 
reminders of their original feudal separation. The differences between the 
pays de droit coutumier and the pays de droit ecrit, and between the pays 
d'etats and the pays d'' 'election are examples. The existence of custom-houses 
along interior provincial boundary lines seems especially foreign to the 
modern idea of a state. These differences remained, like those of feudal 
rank, until the Revolution. 



CHAPTER XIV 

ENGLAND AND THE OTHER STATES 

Our brief sketch of English history before the Nor- 
man conquest revealed two facts of the highest impor- 
tance in their bearing upon the later English constitution. 
One was that only" the slightest Roman influence had 
been felt by the Saxons, the other that the political feu- 
dal system of the Continent had obtained no footing in 
the island. Then followed the Norman conquest, in ap- 
pearance the most revolutionary epoch of the medieval 
history of England. But it was, in truth, less revolution- 
ary than it seems, though a real beginning point in some 
lines of national growth. 

The Norman conquest was less revolutionary than it 
seems upon the surface because the institutions which it 
introduced were in the main from the same ultimate 
source as the Saxon. They were Frankish, that is Teu- 
tonic, and except for the feudal system Teutonic not 
seriously modified by the Roman institutions with which 
they had been in intimate relation. Their growth through 
the time which preceded 1066 had been along practically 
the same lines as the Saxon institutional growth. They 
had for various reasons developed more rapidly, so that 
the chief difference between the type of government 
which the Normans brought into England and that which 
they found there may be said to be that the latter was 
in a stage of development some generations behind the 
former. The practical result was that the substitution 
of the Norman general government for the Saxon was 

332 



ENGLAND AND THE OTHER STATES 333 

easily made with no sense of violent change and no real 
revolution. This was true even of political feudalism, 
the most decided innovation, because the drift towards 
this side of feudalism, inchoate and uncombined begin- 
nings as in commendation of land and primitive vassalage, 
made the sudden introduction of the completed system 
seem not illogical or revolutionary. The same cir- 
cumstance affected also the opposite result. It was easy 
in some cases for the Normans to adopt a Saxon insti- 
tution as part of their general arrangements instead of 
introducing something less satisfactory of their own. An 
instance of this kind is the office of sheriff for local admin- 
istration, and probably also the economic feudal organi- 
zation, the manorial system, at least in some features. 
Finally, the question as to whether a given institution 
is of Norman or of Saxon origin is, for our purpose, of 
little importance. In either case, the ultimate origin is 
Teutonic, and in either case the constitutional result, the 
value of the institution to the world at large, is the value 
given to it by Englishmen after the conquest. 

The conquest brought into English history two new 
factors which had most decided influence upon the future. 
First, in the place of a weak king, personally weak and 
almost overshadowed by one or two great noble families, 
who threatened to bring about some of the results of 
continental feudalism, it put a strong king, strong by the 
fact of conquest, strong in character, and strong in the 
traditions and constitutional development of his office in 
Normandy. This meant absolutism in the actual conduct 
of the general government, but for the local institutions of 
England it meant very little. The body of the Saxon laws 
remained in force by the choice and will of the king, and 
influenced only slightly by feudalism. It was a century 
before the centralization which began with the conquest 
affected in any marked degree local institutions, particu- 
larly the shire courts. 



334 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

In the second place, the conquest introduced the po- 
litical feudal system into England; it was not, however, 
the feudal system of France. It was introduced by a 
strong king, because it furnished the only method for 
the organization of the general government with which 
he was familiar, but it was introduced in such a way that 
the king remained strong in comparison with his vassals, 
because of those characteristics of Norman feudalism 
which have been specified in Chapter VIII. As one 
consequence there was in England no great baron occupy- 
ing such a position of independence as the duke of Nor- 
mandy, or the duke of Aquitaine, or even the count of 
Anjou, occupied in France. As another consequence the 
feudal system never took the place of an inefficient national 
government and exercised locally its functions in England, 
and the results which the opposite fact produced in France 
and Germany never appeared there. Only for a brief 
time, under a weak and insecure king, Stephen, did the 
feudal lords usurp powers of the general government, 
coining money and freely waging private war, and give 
the English a short experience of conditions familiar to 
their neighbors on the mainland. 

Another result of the introduction of the feudal system 
was to create a more definitely organized body of nobles 
than had existed before, no one of whom perhaps equalled 
in power the Godwin family of Edward the Confessor's 
time, but who were, as a body, stronger than the body 
of Saxon nobles. For the moment this fact had no re- 
sults. The barons had first to learn a lesson foreign to 
their class anywhere else in the world of that time, the 
lesson of combination with one another and with the 
middle class, before they could begin to stand successfully 
against the superior might of the king. This is a fact of 
great significance in relation to the different roads taken 
by French and English history. The French baron was 
so placed that he could hope to secure independence, and 



ENGLAND AND THE OTHER STATES 335 

naturally this was the object which he sought. This led 
him into opposition not merely to the government but 
also to others of his own order who were in some sense 
his rivals, and consequently combinations among the 
barons against the king are less common in French his- 
tory, and when they occur have more of a personal and 
less of a public character. The English baron, however, 
having no hope of establishing by himself an independent 
principality, learned to seek the aid of others against the 
power of the king, and as he was successful, went on 
gradually, not to independence, but to an increasing pop- 
ularizing of the general government of the state, the form 
which a reduction of the royal power necessarily took in 
England. 

This was a lesson, however, which was only slowly 
learned. Not until a hundred and fifty years had elapsed 
from the date of the conquest was the formation of the 
English constitution really taken in hand. The Norman 
and the first Angevin kings were to all intents absolute 
monarchs. Such forms of a more popular government as 
continued locally in operation furnished no real check upon 
their action. Nor did the rights of the barons as against 
the king which the feudal law recognized. Taxation, such 
as there was, was practically at their will. There was no 
legislative assembly which survived apart from their feu- 
dal court, and there was no legislation except their own. 
Lawyers trained in the Roman law did not hesitate to 
declare, here as on the Continent, that the will of the 
prince was valid law. Slight signs of resistance had not 
been wanting, among the barons of resistance to the 
king's absolute power over them, among the middle class 
on account of oppressive extortion of money, as under 
Richard I. But these were isolated cases and led to no 
definite results. The history of organized and self-con- 
scious opposition to the king, embodying its results in 
constitutional documents to which clear appeal could be 



336 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

made against the sovereign, and whose enforcement 
marked out a consistent policy from generation to gen- 
eration — the history, in other words, of the formation of 
the constitutional, or limited monarchy, opened in the 
reign of King John, and recorded the results of the first 
victory in Magna Carta. 

It was in all probability nothing more than the selfish 
wish of the barons to protect themselves against the 
abuse of power by the king, and to gain as much for 
themselves as they could, which influenced them in their 
rebellion against John. They did not have — it would 
not have been possible for them to have had — any such 
motive before them as was before the leaders of the re- 
sistance to the Stuarts in the seventeenth century, nor 
were they led by any hereditary influence from the spirit 
or practice of liberty of earlier generations. So far as 
spirit and wish of theirs are concerned, they would have 
preferred the results which were sought by the barons of 
France and Germany, and would have used their victory 
to reach such ends if circumstances had not made them 
impossible. As it was, they included incidentally in the 
guarantees demanded of the king in the statement of 
their own feudal rights, also principles affecting the peo- 
ple at large and more directly bearing upon popular liberty, 
or at least principles which could at a later time be so 
interpreted. Many of these guarantees were the formula- 
tion of old principles and practices, but the relation of 
Magna Carta to the future is far more important than its 
relation to the past. And yet, in relation to the future, 
it was suggestion and germ rather than a clear concep- 
tion even of important institutions then beginning to form. 

According to the interpretation long prevalent, five 
fundamental principles of present Anglo-Saxon liberty 
were contained in Magna Carta. These were, the right 
to trial by jury, the principle of the habeas corpus, the 
illegality of taxes not consented to by the nation's rep- 



ENGLAND AND THE OTHER STATES 337 

resentatives, fixed places of riveting for the courts of 
common pleas, and the principle, to put it in the words 
of its latest and somewhat more general formulation, that 
no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property 
without due process of law. But such an interpretation 
reads into the document, upon some of these points, a 
meaning derived from later history, and yet, in one sense, 
not incorrectly. In studying the Great Charter as a his- 
torical document, it is necessary to have regard to what 
its provisions meant to those who drew them up. But, 
whatever this may have been, it does not exhaust the 
meaning of Magna Carta as an influence in the growth of 
English liberty. It was not many generations before the 
progress of events, of which it was the starting point, made 
its clauses appear to contain a meaning foreign to the 
minds of its contemporaries, and when this occurred, its 
weighty sanction was a real force in the establishment 
and protection of the institutions which, it was believed, 
had been intended. Trial by jury, in the later sense, as 
a means of protecting the individual, is not in Magna 
Carta. It could not well have been there, for the jury 
was then only just beginning to be formed, and had not 
yet reached an importance, or indeed a use, which would 
have justified its insertion in a document of this sort. 
The "judgment of his peers" referred to is the judgment 
of the feudal court or of the community of freemen, once 
common to the popular courts of all the German states, 
and from them passing to the later forms of courts every- 
where. The words used in the charter, judicium parium, 
are not infrequent in the feudal documents of the Conti- 
nent. And yet the "judgment of his peers'' came soon 
to mean to every Englishman trial by jury, and Magna 
Carta seemed to secure to him that right. And justly 
so, for the bearing of the practice which it did guarantee 
upon liberty is identical with that of the jury system, 
which took its place. So, again, in the matter of the 



33^ MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

consent to taxation. The practice, in its later form, is 
not referred to in Magna Carta, either in the matter of 
the consent or of the taxation. The reference is again 
to feudal law, to the recognized right of the vassal to 
give his consent to any extraordinary "aid," that is, to 
any aid besides the three regular ones specified in the 
charter, before he could legally be compelled to pay it. 
But here again the principle is involved, and later ideas 
extended Magna Carta to cover the new practice. In re- 
gard to the other three points relating to the administra- 
tion of justice, the original meaning of the Great Charter 
is more closely in harmony with the later ideas, though 
put in a more special and narrower way. In general, 
Magna Carta holds rightly the great place which is given 
it in the history of civil liberty. It gave a solemn sanc- 
tion and a definite statement, to which appeal could ever 
afterwards be made, to certain most fundamental prin- 
ciples of liberty, much wider in their application than its 
framers knew, and by establishing the principle that 
there is a body of law by which the king is bound and 
which he may be forced to keep, it gave direction towards 
the securing of national rights to nearly every subsequent 
case of insurrection against the sovereign in English his- 
tory. 

It is not necessary for us to follow step by step the 
familiar historical events which were associated with the 
growth of the English constitution. It will answer our 
purpose if we can obtain an idea of the amount of prog- 
ress which had been made by the close of the middle 
ages in the work of transforming the monarchy of William 
the Conqueror into the virtual republic of to-day, and of 
the institutional forms in which the results had been em- 
bodied. 

The English constitution at the close of the middle 
ages, as at the present time, comprised two distinct kinds 
of institutions, each essential in its way to the general 



ENGLAND AND THE OTHER STATES 330 

result. First were institutions of a negative character, 
intended to protect the individual from the arbitrary 
displeasure of the executive. Such were the jury, the 
principle of the habeas corpus, and the statutory def- 
initions of treason. The second were institutions which 
may be called positive in character, whose object was to 
give to the representatives of the nation some power to 
check the public actions of the king and some share in 
the operations of the government. Examples of these 
are, impeachment and the principle that the consent of 
the House of Commons is necessary to the validity of a 
statute. National consent to taxation is a matter that 
lies midway between the two and partakes of the nature 
of both. Demanded at first as a protection of the in- 
dividual against the executive, and always serving that 
end, it became also the most effective means of increas- 
ing the share of the nation in the control of public affairs. 
Certainly civil liberty could not exist at all without the 
institutions of the first class, as a little study of contem- 
porary Russia will make clear, nor could any great prog- 
ress be made towards a republican constitution without 
those of the second. 

As occupying a midway position between the two 
kinds of institutions mentioned above, the right of self- 
taxation is first to be considered. The most obstinate 
and long-continued struggle, also, of this period of En- 
glish history was over this right, and Englishmen in all 
parts of the world have always considered it the most 
fundamental principle of their constitution. If the exec- 
utive can provide a large enough revenue to meet his 
needs, independently of the nation, he is independent in 
everything else, and can do what he pleases. This strug- 
gle, when looked at as a whole, may have the appearance 
of a succession of special cases rather than of the follow- 
ing of a definite purpose, but the cases are as decisive 
in the current of historical events as the principle is in 



340 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the constitution, and both sides saw what was involved 
clearly enough to make the contest obstinate and pro- 
tracted. 

At the time of Magna Carta, taxation had just entered 
the transition period between the feudal methods of aids 
and tallages, and the more regular methods of modern 
times. Into the history of this transition we cannot 
enter, the essential fact is that the principle of consent 
was an extension to a more general tax of the feudal 
principle, that the consent of the vassal must be obtained 
to an extraordinary aid. The feudal relation was a con- 
tract with definite specifications. Neither party to the 
contract had any right to enlarge those specifications to 
his advantage without the consent of the other, and the 
point was carefully guarded wherever possible in a mat- 
ter of such importance in feudal days as the payment of 
money. When national taxation began to be possible, 
towards the close of the feudal age, its introduction was 
rendered easier by the application to it of this feudal 
principle; indeed that was the only natural thing to do, 
and such an application of it was by no means peculiar 
to England. As feudal taxation anywhere broadened 
into modern taxation, the principle of consent tended to 
broaden with it. That which was peculiar to England 
was that the early establishment of the principle made 
it the great weapon in the hands of the acting force of 
the nation to compel the sovereign to grant almost every- 
thing else. 

It was the financial necessities of John's son, Henry 
III, which forced him to submit to the plan of govern- 
ment embodied by the barons in the Provisions of Ox- 
ford, in 1258. This was a plan for the conduct of affairs 
by committees of Parliament, which was a peculiar fore- 
shadowing of the present English system, though not a 
direct ancestor of it, but which was fortunately prema- 
ture; fortunately because no middle class of large po- 



ENGLAND AND THE OTHER STATES 34 1 

litical influence had at that time been formed, and gov- 
ernment by committees of Parliament, if successfully es- 
tablished, would have ended in a narrow oligarchy. The 
attempt of the king to free himself from this control led 
to the famous struggle with Simon de Montfort, and to 
the Parliament of 1265, in which representatives from 
the boroughs made their appearance for the first time 
with the knights of the shire, who had begun to repre- 
sent the counties in Parliament a few years earlier. The 
military victory of the king over the barons was com- 
plete, but it was followed by a formal recognition on his 
part of those points among their demands which did not 
involve an immediate limitation of the king's freedom of 
action. 

Thirty years later there was another contest between 
the king, now Edward I, and the barons, certainly as 
factious on the part of the latter as any in the series, but 
involving the question of taxation, and closed by a new 
and full agreement by the king to observe the provisions 
of the Great Charter. The agreement not to tax without 
consent was now so explicitly made by the king, there had 
been so many precedents established of taxation by ex- 
pressed consent that the principle may be said to be finally 
accepted by the close of the reign of Edward I, that only 
those taxes were legal which had been granted by the 
nation. Hereafter the sovereign might attempt to escape 
by some form of evasion from the limitation placed upon 
him, but when brought face to face with the question he 
necessarily admitted the principle. 

Hardly had this point been gained when Parliament 
advanced another step, almost as important, in the his- 
torical sequence. In 1309 they voted a tax for the bene- 
fit of King Edward II, on the condition that certain abuses, 
which they specified, should be reformed, and the king 
was obliged to consent. This precedent was not followed 
for a generation, but the long war with France, which 



342 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

began about 1340, made the sovereign more dependent 
than ever upon the grants of Parliament and the prac- 
tice of attaching conditions to votes of money began in 
earnest. 1 Edward III was compelled to acknowledge the 
illegality of various forms of taxation by which the prin- 
ciple of consent had been evaded, or for which, in earlier 
times, it had not been necessary. Under Richard II the 
Parliament began to ask how the money granted had 
been used, and to specify the purposes to which it should 
be applied. Henry IV, the first Lancastrian, held the 
throne by a Parliamentary title, and he allowed, if he 
did not always definitely recognize, the right of Parlia- 
ment to attach conditions to votes of taxes, to require 
the redress of abuses before the taxes were voted, to 
direct the general use to be made of the money, and to 
require an account of it, and these points were still 
further secured before the end of the century. With the 
definite establishment of these rights the control of Par- 
liament over taxation was complete. It was not yet 
complete beyond the possibility of question or evasion. 
It had still to pass through the Stuart period before that 
point was reached. But in the legal recognition of all 
the principles involved it was complete before the ac- 
cession of the House of Tudor. 

The increasing power of Parliament over taxation is 
only one form of its increasing power in the general gov- 

1 The French possessions of the English were of great assistance to the 
growth of liberty from the fact that they involved the sovereigns in affairs 
on the Continent which seemed to them of as great, and sometimes of greater, 
importance than those of their English kingdom, while the nation, and 
even the great barons of Norman origin, had but little interest in them. 
The baron was ready to refuse all aid to the king unless satisfied upon the 
point especially near to him, his rights at home; the king was ready to com- 
promise on the demands of the barons if he could get their help in France. 
The French possessions were lost when they had ceased to be of use in 
domestic politics, and when the growth of international rivalries would have 
made a continental position of great disadvantage to the cause of the En- 
glish people. 



ENGLAND AND THE OTHER STATES 343 

ernment of the country, and leads us directly to a con- 
sideration of the share of the nation in the control of 
public affairs at the beginning of modern history. The 
primary fact in this direction, upon which nearly all the 
rest was founded, was the composition of the House of 
Commons. This was determined by a fact which dis- 
tinguishes the England of the later middle ages from all 
other European countries — the existence of a land own- 
ing middle class, of a class the great majority of whom 
would have ranked with the nobles in any continental 
state, and would have insisted upon their rank and privi- 
leges with especial strictness, but who, in England, found 
themselves more nearly allied in interests and desires 
with the Third Estate than with the great barons. This 
union was due to a variety of causes, prominent among 
which was the county organization, in which it had 
long existed. It was the county organization, also, which 
very possibly suggested the principle and the method of 
representation, the representation first of the counties by 
the knights of the shire, and then of the boroughs in 
1265. The composition of Parliament in these respects 
was finally fixed by the " model Parliament" of 1295, in 
which the representatives of the towns appeared, con- 
stitutionally summoned now by the king, not by a rev- 
olutionary leader. The great result which followed from 
the union of the knights with the burgesses was that no 
Third Estate existed in England in the same sense as in 
the other countries of the time. The House of Commons 
could easily represent not a class but the nation, and this 
was increasingly the case as time went on. This union 
in the Commons was rendered easier and more complete 
by the fact, peculiar also to England, that all the mem- 
bers of a noble family, except the one actually holding 
the title, came to be in law commoners and early joined 
the House of Commons. The fact also that the clergy as 
a body withdrew from Parliament, some members of the 



344 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

order only attending the House of Lords in their capac- 
ity as barons, should not be overlooked. The alliance of 
the English nobility with the Commons in the struggle 
for liberty was determined not merely by the fact that 
the barons were so placed that they needed allies against 
the king, but also by the fact that the English Commons 
was a far more influential and powerful body than any 
contemporary Third Estate. 

As Parliament increased its power there increased also, 
step by step, the weight and authority of the House of 
Commons. That process, which is so marked a feature 
of English history in modern times, by which the House 
of Commons has gradually drawn into its hands the whole 
government of the country, begins within less than a 
century after the model Parliament, almost immediately, 
in fact, after the definite separation of the lower house as 
a distinct body, before the middle of the fourteenth cen- 
tury, and it was clearly on the road to completion before 
the events of the Tudor and Stuart reigns interrupted 
the regular development for a time. 

By a series of precedents, beginning in the reign of 
Edward III, the Commons had secured the recognition 
of the principle that their consent was necessary to the 
validity of a law, and that no changes should be made 
in the wording of a law after its adoption by Parliament. 
Beginning from the same time, they had established their 
right to inquire into abuses in the administration of the 
public business, and to hold the king's ministers to trial 
and punishment for their misconduct by an impeach- 
ment conducted by themselves. The great principle 
necessarily involved in this, that, since the king can do 
no wrong, all misconduct in the administration must be 
due to his ministers, who can be brought to account and 
punished without civil war or revolution, was not put into 
any explicit shape, as a recognized constitutional doctrine, 
until the latter part of the Stuart period; but the foun- 



ENGLAND AND THE OTHER STATES 345 

dation for it was laid in the reign of Richard II. Finally, 
it was a very important precedent which was made by 
Parliament, though without any very definite idea of its 
meaning, in the deposition of Edward II, in 1327. By 
the deposition of Richard II, in 1399, this precedent was 
made stronger, and the fundamental principle, by which 
alone a revolution of the sort can be justified, was made 
more evident. For the thing which made the nation 
turn against Richard II was not the wrongs which Henry 
of Lancaster had suffered, but the king's violent disre- 
gard of their constitutional liberties. The principle that 
the king must govern according to the laws, as a develop- 
ment of the fundamental idea of Magna Carta, was al- 
ready fixed in public consciousness before the War of the 
Roses began. 

The age of the Tudors, which followed, was, however, 
a time of great danger for popular government. The 
near remembrance of a long civil war, the weakening of 
the old nobility, the accession of a brilliant king with 
popular graces and a strong will, a revolution in one 
department of the public life, the church, which tended 
to increase the royal power, all things combined to make 
the danger serious that England would be turned into 
the path which the continental states were following, 
and the king become absolute. Had Henry VIII really 
cared for such a result, it is difficult to say what the out- 
come would have been. But the Parliamentary title of 
their house to the throne, together with the long experi- 
ence of the kings in being held to the law, was probably 
more decisive than indifference or absorption in something 
else in keeping the Tudors in the main faithful to the forms 
of law, notwithstanding their practical despotism. When 
another family succeeded to the throne, with less hold 
upon the nation, the complementary principle was made 
a part of the constitution, more clearly and consciously 
than before, though not without a strong party against it, 



346 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

that, if the king will not obey the law, the penalty is the 
loss of the throne. The sovereign has never since denied 
that he holds his place by the will of the people. The 
revolutions of the seventeenth century had for their result, 
indeed, but little if anything more than to render explicit, 
and beyond the possibility of further dispute, the points 
already established in principle before the accession of 
the Tudors. The growth of the English constitution in the 
two hundred years since 1688 seems rapid and large as 
compared with the four centuries from William I to 
Henry VII; but in reality, except in one point, the growth 
of democracy, the progress of the past two centuries has 
consisted in devising machinery for applying the princi- 
ples gained by 1485 and finally fixed by the failure of the 
Stuarts to overthrow them, to more and more of the details 
of the government, as in the formation of the cabinet, for 
example, and in the control by the ministry of the nation's 
foreign policy. 

For the protection of the individual the institution 
which was most nearly in its present form at the close of 
the middle ages was the jury, though the especially fa- 
mous cases of its use against the executive were still to 
occur. The primitive institution, out of which the jury 
grew, was brought into England by the Normans, who 
had themselves derived it from the Franks. In its early 
form the jury was a body of men chosen from among 
those who were supposed to have a personal knowledge 
of the matter, to whom was submitted, under oath, the 
question as to the facts in any case which might arise 
in administrative or executive matters, the assessment 
of taxes, for example, or of fines, as in clause twenty 
of Magna Carta. This practice came into use in the 
king's courts, as distinguished from the county courts, for 
the settlement of disputes concerning the possession and 
ownership of lands, and was recognized in the laws under 
Henry II. From this time the development of the insti- 



ENGLAND AND THE OTHER STATES 347 

tution was rapid, more slow in criminal than in civil cases, 
and the jury gradually advanced from depending upon 
their own knowledge of the facts concerned to taking into 
account evidence submitted to them. The jury system 
secures two points which are of great value for individual 
liberty. The first is the right of the citizens themselves 
to decide the guilt or innocence of the accused, in view, if 
the case seems to demand it, of general considerations 
rather than of the special evidence. 1 This is a right of 
the utmost importance in the trial of political offenders, on 
charges either of technical violation of existing laws or of 
constructive or pretended offences. The second is the 
fact that, by the use of the jury, the judge occupies a 
position of impartiality in a criminal trial, as, in a sort, 
an umpire between the parties, and is not directly inter- 
ested in ascertaining the facts, as in the French criminal 
practice, for instance, where the judge is almost a legal- 
ized inquisitor, and the accused is subjected to a judicial 
examination, which, however carefully it may be guarded, 
seems to the Anglo-Saxon mind a serious evil. 2 Neither 

1 Interesting instances of the application of this principle are to be found 
in recent American experience, in cases where juries have acquitted persons 
brought to trial for the violation of local liquor laws, against the most con- 
clusive and notorious evidence because the laws did not have the sanction 
of the community. 

So thoroughly established does our civil liberty seem to us, so little do 
we fear any encroachment upon it by the executive, that the popular con- 
sciousness has almost lost sight of the fact that the jury system is one of 
the most important institutions by which our liberty is secured. The ad- 
vocates who arise periodically in favor of its abolition, because of the abuses 
to which it has lent itself in the enforcement of the laws, seem rarely to 
have any knowledge of its history. Indeed, it must be admitted that 
against what may be the danger of the future, the tyranny of a democracy, 
the jury is anything but a protection. 

2 In America we seem to be in some danger of destroying unconsciously 
this safeguard of liberty in the growing use of what is called the police 
"third degree." In this thoroughly un- Anglo-Saxon examination of sus- 
pected persons, not merely policemen but elected officers of the courts have 
sometimes taken part, and processes have been said to be used which at 
least border closely upon torture. 



348 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

of these points was clearly fixed in the English practice 
at the close of the middle ages. The beginning had been 
made in the definite organization of the jury system, of 
which these were to be the necessary conclusions, but it 
was reserved for later times to draw them clearly. In 
fact, the independence of the judge, from executive inter- 
ference, as well as his independence in the process of 
trial, was the most important specific element of Anglo- 
Saxon liberty not distinctly foreshadowed in medieval 
times. 

Other rights of individual liberty, secured by 1485, 
cannot be better stated than in the words of Hallam, at 
the beginning of his Constitutional History. He says: 
"No man could be committed to prison but by a legal 
warrant specifying his offence; and by a usage nearly 
tantamount to constitutional right, he must be speedily 
brought to trial by means of regular sessions of gaol-de- 
livery. The fact of guilt or innocence, on a criminal 
charge, was determined in a public court, and in the 
county where the offence was alleged to have occurred, 
by a jury of twelve men, from whose unanimous verdict 
no appeal could be made. Civil rights, so far as they 
depended on questions of fact, were subject to the same 
decision. The officers and servants of the crown, vio- 
lating the personal liberty or other right of the subject, 
might be sued in an action for damages to be assessed 
by a jury, or, in some cases, were liable to criminal proc- 
ess; nor could they plead any warrant or command in 
their justification, nor even the direct order of the king." 

To this should be added the fact that by a law of Ed- 
ward III, in 1352, the judicial punishment of treason 
had been limited to certain definitely specified cases, a 
safeguard for the individual of as great importance 
against a democracy as against a monarchy. The En- 
glish law has not greatly improved upon this ancient 
statute, but the American has gone much further in the 



ENGLAND AND THE OTHER STATES 349 

same direction in the clause of the Constitution on the 
subject which marks out very strict limitations both of 
definition and of trial. 

England was by no means a republic at the close of the 
fifteenth century. Much had yet to be done before that 
end was reached, but the work of converting it into a 
republic was well under way, and, as compared with any 
of the other states of the time, of equal size or promise, 
it entirely justifies the remark of Philip de Comines, cited 
in the last chapter, 1 or the words of Sir John Fortescue, 
written under Henry VI, and so often quoted: "A king 
of England cannot, at his pleasure, make any alterations 
in the laws of the land. . . . He is appointed to protect 
his subjects in their lives, properties, and laws; for this 
very end and purpose he has the delegation of power from 
the people, and he has no just claim to any other power 
but this." 

With the close of the Hohenstaufen period in German 
history the power of the central government had almost 
totally disappeared, and the complete sovereignty and 
independence of the feudal subdivisions of the state were 
practically established if not legally recognized. The 
period of twenty years which followed, known as the 
Great Interregnum, during which there was only the 
merest shadow of a general government — the nominal 
sovereignty in the hands of foreigners, who, if they vis- 
ited Germany at all, did so only for parade, and every 
local ruler laying his hands upon what he pleased that 
was within his reach — completed the process of dissolu- 
tion, if it needed completion. 

The" policy which the electors definitely adopted, and 
continued in operation through the age which follows the 
Interregnum, is equivalent to an official declaration that 
this dissolution was complete. In electing an emperor 

1 See p. 329, note. 



350 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

they selected, so far as possible, a candidate from a family 
having but scanty resources and small power of its own, 
and they changed from one family to another as often as 
circumstances would permit. Rudolf of Hapsburg, Adolf 
of Nassau, Henry of Luxemburg, and Lewis of Bavaria 
are all examples of this policy. It was manifestly the 
result of a united judgment on the part of the electors, 
almost formally expressed, that if a real national govern- 
ment was ever to be reconstructed, and a centralization 
established like that which was forming in France, it must 
be done by the independent family resources of the em- 
peror. It could not be done, in their judgment, by the 
use of the sovereign rights and prerogatives which re- 
mained to the imperial office. The emperor's power as 
sovereign, in its actual condition, was not to be feared; 
the only source of danger to their position was the fact 
that his personal power might be great enough to lead 
him to try to recover the rights of government which had 
been lost. This policy the electors followed in general 
to the end of the middle ages, and they finally allowed the 
imperial succession to settle quietly in the Hapsburg 
family only when it had become manifest to all the world 
that it was nothing more than an empty title. 

The policy which the emperors on their side adopted 
was an equally emphatic declaration of the same fact. 
Not a single one of them, during the whole period, made 
any serious attempt to reconstruct the central govern- 
ment, but every family, without exception, that gained 
possession of the imperial office, attempted to make all 
that it could out of the opportunities of the position to 
enlarge its own possessions and to increase its family 
power. Some met with greater and others with less 
success; but all — Hapsburg and Nassau, Wittelsbach 
and Luxemburg — were governed by the same rules of 
conduct. It was in effect a unanimous agreement on 
the part of the emperors that centralization was no 



ENGLAND AND THE OTHER STATES 35 1 

longer possible, that there was no use in trying to form a 
national government of the German people, but that the 
only successful use to which the imperial position could 
be put was to make their own local state as large and as 
strong as possible. 

The two families most successful in this policy were 
those of Hapsburg and of Luxemburg. Rudolf of Haps- 
burg, the first emperor chosen after the Interregnum, was 
a count whose scanty possessions lay in western Switzer- 
land and Alsace. He was a man of vigorous character, 
but one in no way distinguished in power or possessions 
from a hundred others in the Germany of that day who 
remained unheard of in history. The fortunate fact that 
he was able to break up the threatening Slavic king- 
dom, which was ruled over by Ottokar II, king of Bo- 
hemia, enabled him to bestow the south German duchies, 
Austria and Styria, which had been Ottokar's, upon his 
son, and to lay the foundations of the future greatness of 
his house. The electors did not allow the crown to con- 
tinue during the next generation in Rudolf's family, but 
later other Hapsburg emperors followed, and were able 
to continue his policy. 

An equally fortunate chance occurred during the reign 
of the first Luxemburg emperor, Henry VII, in the op- 
portunity presented him to marry his son John to the 
heiress of the Bohemian crown. John's son, the Em- 
peror Charles IV, succeeded in gaining possession also 
of Brandenburg, which the Emperor Lewis IV of Ba- 
varia, who followed Henry VII, had tried to secure for 
his family. The last emperor of the Luxemburg house, 
Sigismund, abandoned Brandenburg but obtained the 
kingdom of Hungary. He was the last of the male line 
of his family, however, and the great possessions which 
they had brought together passed with his daughter to 
the Hapsburgs, so that the acquisitions made by the two 
families who had most successfully followed the policy 
of getting all that they could for themselves from the 



352 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

imperial office were finally united in the hands of the 
Hapsburgs alone. 

It was during the Luxemburg period that Brandenburg 
passed into the hands of the Hohenzollerns, who have 
erected modern Prussia upon it as the foundation. At 
the beginning of the thirteenth century the Hohenzol- 
lerns were, like the Hapsburgs, merely local counts in 
Switzerland, giving no promise of future greatness. Early 
in that century the elder line obtained the office of Burg- 
graf of Nuremberg and an opportunity to grow rich, which 
was improved with the hereditary thriftiness of the fam- 
ily, and fortunate marriages and purchases increased their 
possessions and influence in southern Germany. Finally, 
in 141 1, the Emperor Sigismund, in need of money and 
unable to establish a sound government in the troubled 
and disordered electorate of Brandenburg, gave it into 
the hands of Frederick of Nuremberg as pledge for a loan, 
and a few years later sold it to him outright. Around this 
as a beginning the later Hohenzollern electors and kings 
collected, piece by piece, the modern Prussia. 

Many other small states were forming in the same way 
in Germany at this time, many that have not survived 
the political storms of modern history, and some that 
have continued to grow larger and stronger, or at least 
that have made good their place in the present federal 
empire of Germany. Within many of these states the 
course of history was very similar to that in France. A 
group of feudally independent territories was united under 
a single ruler, and by degrees the barriers which separated 
them were broken down and they were centralized in a 
common government, and in this process such elements 
of local liberty as had remained were destroyed and the 
government became an absolutism. 1 This process was 

1 The dramatic struggle of Franz von Sickingen against the princes of the 
Upper Rhine valley, in 1523, is an instance of the desperate attempt of the 
smaller independent nobles to maintain their position against the absorbing 
tendency of these little states. 



ENGLAND AND THE OTHER STATES 353 

one, however, which occurred in most cases, and the lar- 
ger part of it in modern history rather than in medieval. 

In Italy, as in Germany, the nation was able to form 
no government. In both cases, as we have seen, the Holy 
Roman Empire was at fault. In Italy it was a foreign 
power which prevented the rise of any native state to a 
sufficient strength to absorb the whole peninsula. To 
the influence of the empire must be added that of the 
papacy as an equally responsible cause — as the one most 
responsible in the last centuries of the middle ages, after 
the empire had practically disappeared, and in modern 
times. The position of the pope, as sovereign of a little 
state in central Italy, had forced him, as a matter of self- 
defence, to use all possible means to prevent the rise of 
any threatening power in Italy from the days of the Lom- 
bards down — down, indeed, to Victor Emmanuel. When 
such a power appeared to be forming the papacy would 
strive to form combinations against it until its strength 
was reduced below the danger-point, and if in the process 
one of the pope's own allies gained too much strength, 
new combinations were immediately set on foot against 
the new danger. 

No government for the nation was able to be formed, 
but an immense variety of local governments arose, and 
a most intricate entanglement of interstate politics. In 
the south, Naples was an absolute monarchy. The States 
of the Church were an ecclesiastical monarchy, very 
loosely organized during most of the middle ages, but 
brought into order and centralized by the political genius 
of Julius II at the beginning of the sixteenth century. 
Florence presents us an interesting case. Originally a 
republic, with a tendency towards democracy, it passed 
under the power of a family of rich bankers, the Medici, 
who, without holding any office and without destroying 
the forms of the republic, hlled all the offices with their 



354 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

nominees and determined every public act exactly as 
does an American "boss" when his party is in power. 1 
In the sixteenth century the state became an avowed 
monarchy under the Medici as grand dukes. Milan was 
a republic turned into a monarchy by military force, and 
Venice a republic which had become a very close oli- 
garchy. 

But if a national government was not formed, a na- 
tional consciousness was, as in Germany, and it was 
given clear expression now and then. Its most remark- 
able product was Machiavelli's Prince, written, beyond 
a reasonable doubt, to show how, in the evil circumstances 
then existing, a national government might be created. 

The rapid rise of Spain to a position of first rank among 
the nations was one of the most important political facts 
of the close of the middle ages. This was due to two 
causes: to the union of the two largest kingdoms of the 
peninsula by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, 
and to the political skill of Ferdinand. Disunion among 
the various provinces, feudal anarchy, local independence, 
and a weak central government were the characteristics 
of Spain when he began to reign. Within a few years 
order was secured, the baronage reduced to obedience, 
the process of breaking down the securities of local in- 
dependence and the old institutions of liberty well begun, 
the monarchy made practically an absolutism, if not in 
every respect legally so as yet, and, although the old pro- 
vincial lines and provincial jealousies could not be entirely 

1 At the moment of writing, in 1893, the newspapers were saying that the 
speaker of the New York Assembly had stated publicly that "all legislation 
of the last session came from Tammany Hall, and was dictated by that 
great statesman, Richard Croker," the "boss" of New York City. See the 
New York Nation, vol. LVI, p. 304, which added: "Nothing that Croker 
desired to pass failed of passage, and nothing that he objected to was able 
to get even a hearing." This was exactly the position of the early Medici. 
Cases of the sort have not entirely disappeared from the United States since 
1893. 



ENGLAND AND THE OTHER STATES 355 

obliterated, they were thrown into the background by the 
coming up of new and more national interests. It was 
chance rather than skill which added America to the re- 
sources of the Spanish monarchy, but it formed no in- 
considerable element in the rapid rise of the new state. 
In all else, the internal consolidation, the conquest of 
Granada and Navarre, the footing gained in Italy, the 
judgment in regard to the policy of France, and the allies 
which were secured, the political skill of Ferdinand must 
be admitted, however disastrous his policy was to prove 
in other hands and in conditions which no genius could 
forecast. 

Ferdinand was, of all the sovereigns of his day, the 
one who saw most clearly that, in political affairs, the 
middle ages had passed away and a new age begun. He 
could hardly have stated his opinion in these words, but 
he realized that the settlement of the domestic problems 
which he had so well in hand left the state at liberty to 
secure advantages for itself in Europe at large, and that 
the near rivalry of other European states for these ad- 
vantages made it the part of wisdom to be beforehand 
with them, and to get a footing and allies wherever pos- 
sible. The first links in the chain of modern interna- 
tional politics were forged by Ferdinand. It was the set- 
tlement of these domestic problems in all the states, or 
their settlement to such an extent that they were no 
longer the most pressing necessities of the moment, which 
brings the middle ages to an end politically, and leads 
to the beginning of that most characteristic feature of 
modern history — international diplomacy. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE RENAISSANCE 

We have now traced, as resulting from the influence 
imparted by the crusades, great economic and political 
revolutions which changed the face of history, and 
brought the middle ages to a close so far as their influ- 
ence reached. These two revolutions were hardly more 
than well under way when there began another, growing 
largely out of the conditions which they were producing, 
starting partly from the same general impulse which 
aided them, a revolution of even greater importance than 
they in its influence upon the characteristic features of 
our own time, if it is possible to measure the relative 
values of such movements — that intellectual and scientific 
transformation of Europe which we call the Revival of 
Learning, or the Renaissance. 

Each of these names expresses a great fact which was 
characteristic of the movement and which it is well to 
distinguish, the one from the other. 

There was a revival of learning. The conditions which 
prevailed in the earlier middle ages, and obscured the 
learning which the ancients had acquired, were changing 
rapidly, the effects of the Teutonic invasion were passing 
away. Conquerors and conquered had grown into a sin- 
gle people, and the descendants of the original Germans 
had reached the point where they could comprehend the 
highest results of the ancient civilization. New national 
languages had been formed, and literatures had begun, 
no longer ecclesiastical in authorship or theme but close 

356 



THE RENAISSANCE 357 

to daily life. The stir of great events, and the contagion 
of new ideas in commerce and exploration and politics 
filled the air, and the horizon of men's minds and inter- 
ests was daily growing wider. It was impossible that 
many generations of these economic and political changes 
should go by before men began to realize that there lay 
behind them a most significant history, and that the men 
of the past had many things to teach them. When men 
became conscious of this the revival of learning began. 

But there was more than a revival of learning — more 
than a recovery of what the ancient world had known and 
the medieval forgotten. There was also a renaissance, a 
re-birth of emotions and of faculties long dormant, an 
awakening of man to a new consciousness of life and of 
the world in which he lives, and of the problems which 
life and the world present for the thinking mind to solve, 
and to a consciousness also of the power of the mind to 
deal with these problems and to investigate the secrets 
of nature. 

This intellectual movement was, then, in the first place, 
a recovery of the learning and literature of the ancient 
world. 

Classical literature had never passed into absolute 
eclipse even in the darkest days. The German states 
which took the place of the empire would have been 
glad to preserve and continue the Roman system of pub- 
lic schools, which extended through the provinces, if they 
had known how to do so. But they did not. They were 
themselves still too crude and backward to be able to take 
hold of the old educational system as a rescuing power, 
and to save it from the decline which had already begun, 
nor could they infuse new life and vigor into the dying 
classical literature. On the other hand, the old lacked all 
independent power of growth and did not have force 
enough to master the Germans and raise them rapidly to 
its own level. The disorderly and rapidly shifting po- 



35$ MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

litical conditions of the fifth and sixth centuries did not 
a little also to destroy the schools, and the attitude of 
the church toward them, if not directly hostile, was dis- 
couraging. 

As a result, the state schools disappeared; a really 
educated class no longer existed; the knowledge of Greek, 
which had been very common throughout the West, was 
entirely lost — St. Augustine, at the beginning of the fifth 
century, could use it only with difficulty; and, as an im- 
mediate result of the conquest, the ability to use the 
Latin language correctly also threatened to disappear. 
The sixth and seventh centuries represent probably the 
lowest point reached in the intellectual decline of the 
middle ages, though the actual improvement upon them 
which was made before the eleventh century was not very 
great. 

The place of the state schools was taken in the new 
kingdoms by church schools. The course of study in the 
Roman schools had been a narrow one, as we should 
regard it, its object being chiefly to fit for public life and 
oratory. The church schools were still more narrow — 
not in the nominal course of study which followed the 
classical — the trivium, grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics, 
and the quadrivium, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and 
music— but in the meagre contents of these studies and 
in the practical object, to fit the pupils as priests to read 
the service of the church, not always to understand it. 

The first improvement in these schools came in the age 
of Alcuin, under Charlemagne, as has already been related. 
This was a revival of schools rather than of learning, but 
it brought about an improvement in the writing of Latin, 
and it was broad enough to have led in a short time to 
a very decided advance, if the political and social condi- 
tion had continued to make this possible. Mind was en- 
ergetic and vigorous enough. There was no lack of abil- 
ity. The ecclesiastical literature of the time, both the 



THE RENAISSANCE 359 

mative and the legal, makes that evident. But if 
j was ability there was also the greatest ignorance. 
± iic historical mistakes are of the baldest, the science 
the most absurd, broad and general conceptions are wholly 
lacking. The literature reveals at once the great activity 
of mind and the narrow conditions of the age. 

In the following centuries, here and there, slight im- 
provements were made. The school of Rheims under 
Gerbert in the tenth century, the school of Chartres under 
Bernard in the twelfth century, are remarkable instances, 
but circumscribed, like all else of the time, in their in- 
fluence. Some additions of importance were made to the 
stock of knowledge — some books of Euclid, some treatises 
of Aristotle. Impulses from without began to be received; 
some very slight Byzantine influence, perhaps under the 
Ottos of Germany; more important the influence from 
the Arabian civilization of south Europe, though this is 
extremely difficult to trace with any certainty in its be- 
ginnings; more effectual still, among new influences, the 
general awakening, and the gradual transformation of all 
external conditions which followed the crusades. 

The first effect of these changes and of these new im- 
pulses was that the mind of Europe began to be aroused, 
began to have some dim idea of the work which it might 
do, and became eager to learn and to produce. But it 
still did not know. It did not have the materials of 
knowledge. The work of the ancients was still a sealed 
book to it, and it had no conception of the investigation 
of nature. In consequence it went to work with the 
greatest activity and earnestness on the materials which 
it did have, the dogmatic theology of the church, certain 
scanty principles of the Greek philosophy, and the truths 
which it could derive from reason, and out of these ma- 
terials by purely speculative methods it built up widely 
comprehensive systems of thought, highly organized and 
scientific, so far as it was possible for them to be scien- 



360 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

tine, but one-sided and utterly barren for all the clr. 
terests of modern life, and necessarily so because of the 
limitations of their material and of their method. 1 

This system, scholasticism, was the first movement of 
the age of the Renaissance, its prediction and its intro- 
duction. It originated under the influence of the causes 
which led to the Renaissance, but of these causes when 
they were just beginning to act and only faintly felt. It 
displayed the same characteristics of mind as the later 
age, but these while they were not yet emancipated from 
the control of other and thoroughly medieval character- 
istics. It gave most hopeful promise of what was to be, 
but the new spirit had as yet so little to build upon, and 
was so dwarfed and overshadowed by tradition and au- 
thority, that it could survive and display itself only as 

earnest and eager effort. 

'■ ----- 

1 Lord Bacon described the real nature of scholasticism in a passage which 
cannot be too often quoted in this connection. He says: "This kind of 
'degenerate learning did chiefly reign among the schoolmen, who — having 
sharp and strong wits, and abundance of leisure, and small variety of read- 
ing, but their wits being shut up in the cells of a few authors (chiefly Aris- 
totle their dictator), as their persons were shut up in the cells of monasteries 
and colleges, and knowing little history, either of nature or time — did, out 
of no great quantity of matter and infinite agitation of wit, spin out unto 
us those laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books J For 
the wit and mind of man, if it work upon matter, which is the contempla- 
tion of the creatures of God, worketh according to the stuff and is limited 
thereby; but if it work upon itself, as the spider worketh his web, then it 
is endless, and brings forth, indeed, cobwebs of learning, admirable for the 
fineness of thread and work, but of no substance or profit." — Advancement 
of Learning, IV, 5. 

I To hold up certain absurdities of scholasticism to ridicule, as has some- 
times been done, as if they indicated the real character of the system, is to 
furnish good evidence of one's own narrowness of mind. Not merely did 
scholasticism make important contributions to one side of civilization — 
speculative theology and philosophy — but even its supposed absurdities had 
meaning. ! To debate the question whether an angel can pass from one 
point to another without passing through the intermediate space, is to de- 
bate the question whether pure being is conditioned by space. Very likely 
such a question cannot be answered, but if there is to be a system of specu- 
lative philosophy at all, it must consider such questions in some form, and 
they can hardly be called absurd. 



THE RENAISSANCE 36 1 

The great age of active and creative scholasticism was 
the thirteenth century, one of the greatest intellectual 
ages of the world's history. It is impossible in a para- 
graph to give any conception of the intellectual stir, the 
mental eagerness and enthusiasm of that century, or even 
to catalogue its great names and their achievements. 
Two or three things must be noticed because they indi- 
cate in the clearest way how the results of the thirteenth 
century affected the later movement. 

One of them is the pathetic story of Roger Bacon, a 
man who saw the danger of reliance upon authority, and 
proclaimed the methods of criticism and observation, and 
pointed out the way in which investigation should go, 
and the use which should be made of the new materials 
which had been gained, in a spirit almost modern and 
with such clearness of insight as should have led to the 
revival of learning as one of the immediate results of the 
thirteenth century. But he could get no one to hear him. 
The reign of authority and of deduction, the scholastic 
methods and the scholastic ideals, had become so firmly 
seated in their empire over men, under the influence of 
the great minds of that century, that no others seemed 
possible. His works passed out of the world's knowl- 
edge with no discoverable trace of influence until the Re- 
naissance was fully under way, and then only the very 
slightest. The result of the century, in other words, was 
entirely opposed in nature and in method to a revival of 
real learning. 

Another feature of the thirteenth century to be noticed 
was the founding of universities. Developed out of cer- 
tain of the earlier schools, under the enthusiasm of the 
age for learning, by the introduction of new methods 
of teaching and of study, they spread rapidly throughout 
Europe, and seemed to promise most effective aid to 
intellectual advance. But in their case, as in Bacon's, 
scholasticism was too highly organized, its conceptions 



362 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

still too completely filled the whole mental horizon for 
the learned world to be able to turn in any other direc- 
tion, and the universities fell completely under its con- 
trol. 1 Even subjects of study which it would seem might 
lead to better things — the Roman law which, we should 
think, ought to have led to the study of history; and 
medicine, which ought to have suggested an idea of real 
science — became thoroughly scholastic, and held under 
heavy bonds to introduce nothing new. 

The result, then, of the first or scholastic revival was 
the creation of a gigantic system of organized knowledge, 
in so far as there was knowledge, in which almost every 
conceivable idea had its place, and which exercised a 
most tyrannous sway over all mental activity, because it 
was so intimately bound up with an infallible system of 
theology which every mind was obliged to accept under 
peril of eternal penalties. Independent thinking in phi- 
losophy was heresy and a crime. When the Renaissance 
movement really began, with its new spirit and ideas and 
methods, it found the field wholly occupied by this great 
system, all the learned by profession were its devoted sup- 
porters, and the universities its home. The new spirit 
was compelled, therefore, to take its rise and to find its 
apostles outside the learned professions. The odds were 
against it, and it could restore true knowledge and scien- 
tific method only by severe struggle and a successful 
revolution. 

The final outcome, then, of the thirteenth century was 
that scholasticism, however earnestly it may have desired 
such a result at the beginning, really introduced no revi- 
val of learning, but brought about an organization of 
knowledge and of education which was a decided obstacle 
to the revival when it came. This means, in other words, 

1 Chaucer almost makes "logic" synonymous with "university" in his 
description of the clerk of Oxenford, "that unto logik hadde longe i-go." — 
Prologue, 1. 286. 



THE RENAISSANCE 363 

that no revival could come until the questioning and 
criticising spirit which dimly showed itself in the forma- 
tive age of scholasticism should awake again to a new 
activity and a better fate, and bring about a complete 
abandonment of the medieval point of view. 

By the beginning of the fourteenth century the general 
conditions had come to be still more favorable for such 
an awakening than at the beginning of scholasticism. 
The economic and political progress of the thirteenth 
century had been very great, and the fourteenth century 
was a time of still more rapid change in these respects. 
An entirely new atmosphere was coming to prevail in the 
more advanced nations of Europe, new objects of interest, 
new standards of judgment, and new purposes to be 
realized. If these changes showed themselves first in 
the growth of national feelings and patriotism, in the rise 
of the lower orders and a higher regard for man as man, 
and in bolder commercial ventures and the exploration 
of unknown lands, it was barely first. We can trace their 
continuous expression and influence in thought and lit- 
erature from a point almost as early. 

And there needed to be added to these other changes 
which had already taken place only a change of the same 
sort in intellectual interests, showing itself as clearly in 
science and literature and art as in government and com- 
merce, to complete the transformation of the medieval 
man into the modern. In the middle ages man as an 
individual had been held of very little account. He was 
only part of a great machine. He acted only through 
some corporation — the commune, the guild, the order. 
He had but little self-confidence, and very little con- 
sciousness of his ability single-handed to do great things 
or overcome great difficulties. Life was so hard and nar- 
row that he had no sense of the joy of mere living, and no 
feeling for the beauty of the world around him, and, as 
if this world were not dark enough, the terrors of another 



364 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

world beyond were very near and real. He lived with 
no sense of the past behind him, and with no conception 
of the possibilities of the future. 

It is hardly necessary to say that the modern man, 
who is a modern man, is the opposite of all this. We 
are almost too completely a world of individuals. We 
have a supreme self-confidence. Nearly any man of us 
is ready to undertake any task with a firm confidence in 
his ability to carry it through, and not very many of us 
are shut out of a full enjoyment of the beauties of this 
world by too keen a sense of the realities of another. 
It was the work of the Renaissance to change the one 
sort of man into the other; to awaken in man a conscious- 
ness of his powers and to give him confidence in himself; 
to show him the beauty of the world and the joy of life; 
and to make him feel his living connection with the past, 
and the greatness of the future which he might create. 

It needed but little of the successful work which men 
were doing in those days in the fields of politics and of 
commerce — the creation of states whether large or small, 
and the accumulation of wealth — to arouse these feelings, 
at least in their beginnings, and in a half-conscious way. 
The impulse which intellectual progress received at this 
point from the political and economic is clear — one of the 
evident cases of the close dependence of the various lines 
of advance upon one another already referred to. And 
it is necessary in order to obtain any clear conception of 
this age of transition to feel the intimate connection of all 
these movements with one another, indeed their essential 
unity as various sides of one great movement. 

It was in Italy that this connection was first made 
and this impulse first received. It was there that the 
new commercial age had begun and had first produced 
its results. Numerous large cities had been formed, pos- 
sessed of great wealth and becoming very early little 
independent states. Their fierce conflicts with one an- 



THE RENAISSANCE 365 

other had thrown them upon their own resources, and 
called forth the greatest mental activity. Within their 
walls exciting and bitter party conflicts were a continu- 
ous stimulus to the individual citizen. A democratic 
tendency in most of them opened the hope of great suc- 
cesses to any man. Birth counted for next to nothing. 
Abilities and energy might win any place. Woman be- 
came the equal of man, and took part in public life with 
the same self-confidence. All the political and commer- 
cial activities of the time, with their great rewards open 
to any man, and their intense stimulus to individual am- 
bition, combined to emancipate the individual, and to 
foster in him a belief in his own powers, and an indepen- 
dence of judgment and action, necessary as a preliminary 
to the revival of learning. The rapid development of 
Italy since the crusades, in the one direction, had prepared 
her to lead in the other, and this fact gives us the reason 
why the Renaissance was an Italian event. 

It is in Dante that we find the first faint traces of the 
existence of these new forces in the intellectual world 
proper, and the beginning of their continuous modern 
action, and we may call Dante the first man of the Re- 
naissance, though it is perhaps equally correct to call 
him a thoroughly medieval man. His theology and phi- 
losophy were medieval and scholastic, his hell was mate- 
rial enough, and the dream of his political thought was 
the Holy Roman Empire, a distinctly medieval idea. But 
along with these we catch gleams of other and different 
things. His theology may be medieval and his hell mate- 
rial, but there is an independence of judgment in special 
cases which is decidedly more modern, and, something far 
more important, there is the clearest possible conception 
of the fact that it is not a man's place in a great organiza- 
tion, but his individual character and spirit which deter- 
mine his future destiny; that individual character not 
merely works itself out in the conduct of life, but that it 






366 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

will be a controlling factor in fixing one's place in any life 
hereafter. His political idea may be the Holy Roman 
Empire, but he reveals traces of the distinctly modern 
feeling that the state should exist for the sake of the in- 
dividual, and that the individual should have some voice 
in the management of its affairs. The writing of his great 
poem in a modern language is no small evidence of inde- 
pendence. He has some feeling for the beauty of the 
world and of life, and some real sense of a living connec- 
tion with the men of antiquity. These modern traits, 
however, though they may be found in Dante, are ex- 
pressed but faintly. The great mass of his thought is 
medieval. It is only the slight beginnings of the current 
which we can detect in him. 

But in the next generation, in Petrarch, we have the 
full tide. In him we clearly find, as controlling personal 
traits, all those specific features of the Renaissance which 
give it its distinguishing character as an intellectual revo- 
lution, and from their strong beginning in him they have 
never ceased among men. In the first place, he felt as no 
other man had done since the ancient days the beauty 
of nature and the pleasure of mere life, its sufficiency for 
itself; and he had also a sense of ability and power, and 
a self-confidence which led him to plan great things, and 
to hope for an immortality of fame in this world. In the 
second place, he had a most keen sense of the unity of 
past history, of the living bond of connection between 
himself and men of like sort in the ancient world. That 
world was for him no dead antiquity, but he lived and felt 
in it and with its poets and thinkers, as if they were his 
neighbors. His love for it amounted almost, if we may 
call it so, to an ecstatic enthusiasm, hardly understood by 
his own time, but it kindled in many others a similar feel- 
ing which has come down to us. The result is easily rec- 
ognized in him as a genuine culture, the first of modern 
men in whom this can be found. 



THE RENAISSANCE 367 

It led, also, in his case, to what is another characteris- 
tic feature of the Renaissance — an intense desire to get 
possession of all the writings which the ancient world 
had produced. It was of vital importance, before any 
new work was begun, that the modern world should know 
what the ancients had accomplished, and be able to begin 
where they had left off. This preliminary work of col- 
lection was one of the most important services rendered 
by the men of the revival of learning. For the writings 
of the classical authors Petrarch sought with the utmost 
eagerness wherever he had an opportunity, and though 
the actual number which he was able to find, of those 
that had not been known to some one or other in medieval 
days, was small, still his collection was a large one for a 
single man to make, and he began that active search for 
the classics which was to produce such great results in the 
next hundred years. 

In another direction, also, Petrarch opened the age of 
the Renaissance. The great scientific advance which was 
made by this age over the middle ages does not consist 
so much in any actual discoveries or new contributions 
to knowledge which were made by it, as in the overthrow 
of authority as a final appeal, and the recovery of criti- 
cism and observation and comparison as the effective 
methods of work. Far more important was this restora- 
tion of the true method of science than any specific scien- 
tific work which was done in the Renaissance age proper. 
Here again it is with Petrarch that the modern began. 
He attacked more than one old tradition and belief sup- 
ported by authority with the new weapons of criticism 
and comparison, and in one case at least, in his investi- 
gation of the genuineness of charters purporting to have 
been granted by Julius Caesar and Nero to Austria, he 
showed himself thoroughly imbued with the spirit and 
master of the methods of modern science. 

Finally, Petrarch first put the modern spirit into con- 



368 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

scious opposition to the medieval. The Renaissance 
meant rebellion and revolution. It meant a long and 
bitter struggle against the whole scholastic system, and 
all the follies and superstitions which flourished under its 
protection. Petrarch opened the attack along the whole 
line. Physicians, lawyers, astrologers, scholastic phi- 
losophers, the universities — all were enemies of the new 
learning, and so his enemies. And these attacks were not 
in set and formal polemics alone, his letters and almost 
all his writings were rilled with them. 1 It was the busi- 
ness of his life. He knew almost nothing of Plato, and 
yet he set him up boldly against the almost infallible 
Aristotle. He called the universities " nests of gloomy 
ignorance/' and ridiculed their degrees. He says: "The 
youth ascends the platform mumbling nobody knows 
what. The elders applaud, the bells ring, the trumpets 
blare, the degree is conferred, and he descends a wise 
man who went up a fool." 2 

In the world of the new literature Petrarch obtained 
so great glory in his own lifetime, and exercised such a 
dictatorship that the ideas which he represented obtained 
an influence and extension which they might not other- 
wise have gained so rapidly. When he died, in 1374, 
the Renaissance was fully under way in Italy as a general 
movement, and, while in his own lifetime there is hardly 
another who is to be placed beside him in scholarship and 
knowledge of antiquity, there soon were many such, and 
before very long not a few who greatly surpassed him in 
these respects. But if his scholarship cannot be con- 
sidered great according to modern standards, it will 
always remain his imperishable glory to have inaugurated 
the revival of learning. 3 

x Voigt, Die Wiederbelebung des Classischen Alterthums, vol. I, p. 72, 
third ed. 

2 Mullinger, University of Cambridge, vol. I, p. 382, note 2. 

3 Voigt, one of the soundest and most careful of all students of Renais- 
sance history, says that Petrarch's name shines as a star of the first magni- 



THE RENAISSANCE 369 

The next age immediately following Petrarch had for 
its great work the revival of Greek literature and knowl- 
edge, taught by Greeks from Constantinople. It con- 
tinued, also, the work of collecting and carefully study- 
ing the writings of the ancients. Before the middle of 
the fifteenth century the material in hand, both of the 
Latin and of the Greek classics, was large enough and 
well enough understood to form the foundation of a real 
scholarship which still commands respect. 

One generation later still, and a scholar, in the mod- 
ern sense, appeared, Laurentius Valla. There are many 
things now perfectly familiar which he did not know; 
he had all the pride and insolence and hardly disguised 
pagan feeling and morals of the typical humanist; but in 
spirit and methods of work he was a genuine scholar, and 
his editions lie at the foundation of all later editorial 
work in the case of more than one classical author, and 
of the critical study of the New Testament as well. One 
piece of work which fell to him made more noise at the 
time than these, and in it the scholar had an opportunity 
to contribute directly to the political movements of his 
age. At the request of King Alfonso of Naples he sub- 
jected the so-called Donation of Constantine to the tests 
of the new criticism and showed its historical impossi- 
bility to the conviction of the world, thus depriving the 
papacy of one source of argument in support of its pre- 
tensions. 

Valla was still living when the invention of the print- 
ing-press in the north put a new weapon into the hands 
of the humanists, and enabled them to bring the results 
of their labors to bear upon a vastly wider circle than 
before. The great results of this invention for civilization 
are to be found, not so much in the preservation as in the 

tude in the literary and intellectual history of the world, and would not be 
less if he had never written a verse in the Tuscan language. — Die Wiederbele- 
bung des Classiscfien Alkrthums, I, p. 22. 



370 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

cheapening of books, and the popularizing of the means 
of knowledge. If the printing-press reduced the price of 
books to one-fifth the former price, as it seems to have 
done before it had been in operation very long, it much 
more than multiplied by five the number of persons who 
could own and use them. Although the spread of print- 
ing throughout Europe was slow as compared with the 
rate of modern times — an invention of similar importance 
to-day would probably get into use in the principal places 
of the world within a year or two — it was rapid for the 
middle ages. Invented, apparently, in a shape at least 
to be called really printing, about 1450, it was introduced 
into Italy in 1465, possibly slightly earlier; into France 
and Switzerland in 1470, into Holland and Belgium in 
1473, i nto Spain in 1474, and into England between 1474 
and 1477. By 1500 it was in use in eighteen countries, 
and at least two hundred and thirty-six places had print- 
ing-presses. Venice alone had more than two hundred, 
and three thousand editions had been printed there. 

One immediate consequence of this invention was that 
the results of the revival of learning, its new spirit of in- 
dependence, and its methods of criticism, could no longer 
be confined to one country or to those who were by call- 
ing scholars. They spread rapidly throughout Europe, 
affected large masses of the people who knew nothing of 
the classics, and became vital forces in that final revolu- 
tion of which Luther's work forms a part. 

Down to nearly the end of the fifteenth century the 
humanistic movement had been confined almost wholly 
to Italy. The names and achievements which could be 
claimed by any other country were very few. But as the 
century drew to a close such names became more numer- 
ous out of Italy, and the movement passed to Europe at 
large. 

Among the northern nations the Renaissance not 
merely aroused the same enthusiasm for antiquity and 



THE RENAISSANCE 37 1 

the same eager application, in various directions, of the 
new methods of study, but it also took on among them a 
far more earnest and practical character than it ever had 
in Italy. Investigation and learning ceased to be so en- 
tirely ends in themselves or means to secure personal 
glory, but were put to the service of answering practical 
questions and meeting popular needs. The most emi- 
nent representative of this tendency, and the greatest 
scholar of the Renaissance age proper, was Erasmus. 

Given by the circumstances of his childhood an oppor- 
tunity to devote himself to study from an early age, 
Erasmus, earnest and eager, and of extraordinary ability, 
made remarkable use of the scanty means of learning at 
his command in the monastery in which he was placed. 
A little later, at the University of Paris, in spite of pov- 
erty, and ill health, and other discouragements, his prog- 
ress was still more rapid. In these early stages of his 
education Laurentius Valla seems to have had more in- 
fluence over him than any one else, especially in training 
his judgment in respect to a correct style, a training which 
may have been the birth, perhaps, of a larger critical 
sense. At the age of thirty he went over to England to 
study Greek at Oxford, and there he came under the in- 
fluence of two remarkable men, John Colet and Thomas 
More, and, if we may trust our scanty evidence, this 
influence was of great importance in the development of 
his character and purposes, especially the influence of 
Colet. 1 

Colet had gone to Italy for study while Erasmus was 
at Paris, and while there, apparently, an earnest religious 
purpose was awakened in his mind by some influence 

1 It is characteristic of Mr. Seebohm's very stimulating work in history, 
like that of M. Fustel de Coulanges in France, that it presents very clearly 
and completely the line of connection between the earlier and the later 
stages of a given movement. Meantime, the evidence is often slight, and 
while opposing evidence may be wholly wanting, one cannot escape the 
feeling that the conclusions are sometimes due to keenness of historic in- 



372 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

under which he came, possibly by the spiritualistic phi- 
losophy of Pico della Mirandola, then but recently dead, 
perhaps by some other of the Platonic influences of that 
age, more likely by the strong outburst of religious and 
ethical emotion in Florence under the influence of Sa- 
vonarola. We know so little of Colet' s stay in Italy that 
we can afiirm nothing about it with confidence, and it is 
quite as probable that the deeply earnest purpose which 
he displayed in his work on his return was natural to 
him, strengthened perhaps by Italian influences, possi- 
bly as much by a repugnance to what he saw there as by 
anything directly helpful. 

Upon his return to England Colet began to lecture 
upon the New Testament, with a distinctly practical pur- 
pose. He sought, for example, to reproduce the thought 
of Paul as Paul held it, to gain an understanding of it by 
considering the circumstances in which it was written, 
and of those to whom it was written; in other words, to 
treat it as a living argument, with a definite historical pur- 
pose, and so to make clear what Paul sought to teach. 
This was the application of the spirit and the methods 
of the Renaissance to the living reconstruction of a past 
age. It was treating the New Testament as a historical 
document, not as a collection of scholastic propositions. 
And this was done not for purposes of mere scholarship, 
but in order to learn what that age had to give in the 
way of instruction and help, and to reproduce, for the 
benefit of the present, the spirit and ideas of the early 
Christianity. 

The carrying out of such a purpose was, in the end, 
whether as a result of Colet's influence or not, the great 

sight rather than to direct induction. This is true of important points in 
Mr. Seebohm's Oxford Reformers. I have chosen to follow its conclusions 
because they seem to me, on the whole, probable; but it should be remem- 
bered that there is very scanty evidence to prove what the Oxford reformers 
imparted to Erasmus, as well as to show what Colet gained in Italy. Lup- 
ton's Life of John Colet is a very sober and careful work. 



THE RENAISSANCE 373 

work of Erasmus's life. His ambition was to put the 
documents of primitive Christianity, the New Testament 
and the early fathers, in carefully prepared editions, that 
is, as nearly as possible exactly as they were written, in 
the hands of all men, so that they could judge for them- 
selves what the primitive Christianity was. The idea 
that the only true method of reaching a knowledge of 
Christianity was to go to the original sources of that 
knowledge, itself a direct result of the revival of learning, 
was constantly in his mind after he began his real work, 
and he expresses it over and over again, with varying de- 
grees of clearness. If any one wants to know what Chris- 
tianity is, he says, in effect, what Christ taught, what Paul 
taught, what the Christianity was of those who founded 
it, let him not go to the schoolmen or the theologian. 
He cannot be sure that they represent it truly. Let him 
go directly to the New Testament. There he will get it 
plainly and simply, so plainly that all men can see and 
understand exactly what it was. 

His first step in this work was to publish, in 1505, an 
edition of Valla's Annotations, his criticism of the Vul- 
gate, with a prefatory letter of his own. Then, in 1516, 
was published the first edition of his own New Testa- 
ment, with revised Greek text, new Latin translation, 
and critical notes, in which he defended his variations 
from the Vulgate, and called attention to interesting fea- 
tures of the early Christianity which he thought needed 
present emphasis. 1 This passed through five authorized, 

1 The objections which were made by the conservatives to Erasmus's 
critical study of the New Testament, and the answers which he made are 
interesting in view of recent phases of the same conflict. They may be read 
in Seebohm. One monk writes him: "In very deed, my dear Erasmus, 
there is great harm [in pointing out discrepancies between the Greek and 
Latin copies]. Because, about this matter of the integrity of the Holy 
Scriptures many will dispute, many will doubt, if they learn that even one 
jot or tittle in them is false, . . . and then will come to pass what Augus- 
tine described to Jerome: 'If any error should be admitted to have crept into 
the Holy Scriptures, what authority would be left to them."' — (Oxford Re- 



374 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

and a few pirated, editions in his own lifetime, and sold 
in thousands of copies all over Europe. Besides his work 
on the New Testament he prepared editions of a very- 
large number of the early fathers of the church. 

While no doubt the special object in everything that 
Erasmus undertook was to do a genuine piece of scien- 
tific work, still the distinctly reformatory purpose in it 
all is evident. He wished to show men what the primi- 
tive Christianity was, and so to induce them to reject the 
abuses and corruptions which passed under its name. It 
will be evident, however, when we come to take up the 
Reformation that this reformatory purpose of his was 
not of the same sort as Luther's, and that he could not 
have followed his lead. 1 

The fact that Luther, during this time was moved also 

formers, p. 316, third ed.) Dr. Eck, Luther's opponent, "objected ... to 
the method of Biblical criticism which it adopted throughout. He objected 
to the suggestion it contained, that the Apostles quoted the Old Testament 
from memory, and, therefore, not always correctly. He objected to the 
insinuation that their preek was colloquial, and not strictly classical.' 
Erasmus replied "that, in his judgment, the authority of the whole Scrip- 
tures would not fall with any slip of memory on the part of an Evangelist — 
e. g., if he put 'Isaiah' by mistake for 'Jeremiah' — because no point of im- 
portance turns upon it. We do not forthwith think evil of the whole life of 
Peter because Augustine and Ambrose affirm that even after he had received 
the Holy Ghost he fell into error on some points; and so our faith is not alto- 
gether shaken in a whole book because it has some defects." — (Ibid., pp. 

} 435-436.) 

I x Every reform movement produces two classes of reformers, each seeking, 
perhaps, the same ultimate end, but differing widely as to means. One be- 
lieves that the reformation is to be successfully obtained only by remaining 
within the old organization and reforming from within out. The other be- 
lieves that the old is too set in its ways to be reformed by conservative 
methods and by arguing, and that the only successful way is rebellion, or 
even revolution. It cannot be affirmed that it is so, without exception, 
but it is at least usual in history, certainly where the abuses are deeply 
seated and where the reform has been carried through at all, that the rebels, 
the radical reformers have been those to do it, whether by the success of their 
revolution, or, very likely as often, by its defeat. Erasmus belonged to the 
conservative reformers, to the reformers from within, and, leaving aside all 
theological differences between them, it was entirely impossible that he 
should follow Luther. 



THE RENAISSANCE 375 

by the same controlling idea as Erasmus, and cherished 
the same wish to restore a truer Christianity, and that he 
came upon this thought independently, does not make the 
contribution of Erasmus to the final success of Luther's 
reform any less important. The idea of the necessity of 
an appeal to the original sources of knowledge was in the 
air, as an essential part of the Renaissance age. In rela- 
tion to Christianity, it was absolutely certain that this 
appeal would be taken, and the results of it be made clear 
to the minds of common people as well as to the learned. 
This Luther did. But he could hardly have done his 
work, certainly not so well, but for Erasmus. Erasmus's 
work not merely helped to arouse and make general the 
idea of such an appeal, but it also put into Luther's 
hand, prepared for use, the material which he needed for 
his argument. Luther was the revolutionary leader, Eras- 
mus the scholar. 

In the connection established with the Reformation is 
to be found one of the ways in which the Renaissance 
movement became an important force in the other great 
movements of the time, and passed into the general revo- 
lution — social, political, and religious — with which mod- 
ern history opened. One other of its direct results brings 
it into close connection with our own time as opening 
one of the lines of our greatest advance. 

The application to the natural and physical sciences 
of the new methods of investigation which the Renais- 
sance had brought into use was not made so early as it 
had been to the sciences of historical and philological 
criticism. In these latter fields the work of positive ad- 
vance had already begun, while the sciences of nature 
were still mainly engaged in collecting and recovering 
the facts known to the ancients, the work which Petrarch 
and the generation following him represent for classical 
scholarship. But the first great step of modern science, 
and one of the greatest ever taken in the importance of its 



376 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

results, the Copernican theory of the solar system, falls 
legitimately within the history of the Renaissance, though 
Copernicus did not publish his conclusions until 1543. 

In his dedicatory epistle to Pope Paul III, Copernicus 
describes the almost ideally perfect scientific method 
which he had followed in his work. This method he may 
have learned in Italy, where he studied about ten years, 
going there in 1496, probably the year in which Colet 
returned to England. He notes, as the first step, his dis- 
satisfaction with the old theory, then his search of ancient 
literature to see if another theory had been proposed, his 
reflection upon the suggestion which he found there until 
it assumed the form of a definite theory, the years of 
observation in which he tested the theory by the facts, 
and finally the order and harmony to which the facts 
observed were reduced by the theory. 1 From the great 
advance thus made by Copernicus the progress of as- 
tronomy has been constant and rapid, and the other 
sciences were not far behind. 

In following down the main thread of intellectual work 
which runs through the age of the Renaissance, we have 
passed over various facts of interest in themselves, and 
perhaps as characteristic of it as those which have been 
mentioned, and of some bearing upon later times, but 
which can now receive but slight notice. 

Of value in illustration of the perpetual conflict be- 
tween the old and the new, if we could go into the details 
of it, would be the struggle of the new methods of study 
and their results for a place in the universities and for 
general acceptance. The universities held themselves 
obstinately closed to the new methods long after they 
had achieved brilliant results outside their walls. When 
admission was at last grudgingly allowed a few repre- 

1 See The- Yale Review, voL I (1802), p, t/jo, note 2, for a translation of this 
par-'o r his letter. 



THE RENAISSANCE 377 

sentatives of the new learning, it was accompanied with 
many petty slights and indignities — inaugural addresses 
were required to be submitted for examination before de- 
livery, the use of the library was denied, a share in the 
government of the university was refused, or, as we 
should say, the right to attend the meetings of the faculty, 
or no place was given the new studies in the schedule of 
lecture hours. The church, so bound up with the scho- 
lastic system, came to its defence. Greek was judged a 
heretical tongue. No one should lecture on the New 
Testament, it was declared, without a previous theolog- 
ical examination. It was held to be heresy to say the 
Greek or Hebrew text reads thus, or that a knowledge of 
the original languages is necessary to interpret the Scrip- 
ture correctly. 

But all the forces that make history were with the new, 
and it could not be held back. The opening years of the 
sixteenth century resounded with the noise of its attack, 
now assured of victory, and led by Erasmus and Ulrich 
von Hutten and others of almost equal name. But 
hardly had the new learning obtained possession of the 
universities before it degenerated into a scholasticism of 
its own almost as barren as the old. Cicero became as 
great a divinity as Aristotle, and the letter far outweighed 
the spirit. When a new age of great scientific advance 
came on, in the seventeenth century, the new ideas of 
that time, led by Descartes and Leibnitz and Locke and 
Newton, had the same old battle to right over again. 1 

Of equal interest is the marked sceptical tendency which 
accompanied the Renaissance, especially in Italy, and 

x The scholastic tendency and habit are things extremely hard to work 
out of civilization, or more accurately, perhaps, extremely hard to bring 
into their proper place. Absorption in the process, and in the immediate 
and minute result, is something almost impossible to resist, because of the 
keen enjoyment which comes from successful investigation, but if yielded 
to it is a fearful bondage, and has ruined more promising intellectual begin- 
nings than all the logical fallacies combined. 



373 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

which would seem to be an almost inevitable attendant of 
times of intellectual progress. The unsettling of so many- 
old beliefs, some of them apparently closely bound up 
with the Christian teaching, tended to unsettle all, and 
to produce a dispassionate and intellectual scepticism 
which in the Renaissance age is to be carefully distin- 
guished from the emotional and aesthetic abandonment of 
Christian ethics which was also characteristic of the time. 
Gemistos Pletho, in the middle of the fifteenth century, 
stated his belief that men were about to abandon Chris- 
tianity for some form of paganism, and Pomponazzi said, 
about 1520, that religions have their day of inevitable 
decline and Christianity is no exception to the general 
rule, and that signs could be discerned at that time 
of approaching dissolution in the fabric of our creed. 1 
With this may be compared, perhaps, Voltaire's remark, 
that Christianity would not survive the nineteenth cen- 
tury. 

A single paragraph is so utterly inadequate a space to 
give to the product of the Renaissance age in the fine 
arts, that all mention of it will be omitted except to no- 
tice one fact, which is especially important from our point 
of view, the fine expression which it gives to the leading 
thought of the Renaissance, that which is often called 
"the discovery of man" — the supremacy of man over 
nature — the power and grace and beauty of the ideal 
nature above and beyond mere physical beauty. And 
the value of this expression as a true exponent of the 
Renaissance age lies largely in the fact that it was uncon- 
scious. 

Other characteristic products of the Renaissance age 
are also of great interest; its morals, or rather its want 
of morals, its calm and unconscious immorality, and 
often brutality, united with high aesthetic culture, of 
which we have so remarkable a photograph in the auto- 
1 Symonds, Italian Literature, vol. II, p. 477. 



THE RENAISSANCE 379 

biography of Cellini, to which some would add the Prince 
of Machiavelli. But Machiavelli is one of the typical 
men of the time in more ways than one. He unites in 
himself at least two of its most marked tendencies, the 
political and the scientific, marvellous both for the ideal 
of a united Italian nation, which seems to be the main- 
spring of his thought, and for the example which he gives 
us of the calmness and total absence of feeling or moral 
judgment with which a purely scientific mind dissects a 
diseased organ in a living body. 

The geographical explorations of the age belong partly 
to the history of commerce and have been considered 
there, but in certain aspects of them, represented best 
perhaps by Columbus, they are peculiarly the results of 
the Renaissance forces, and deserve extended notice here 
both as an outgrowth of the age and as an essential fac- 
tor in its influence upon the future. 

The belief that the earth is round had never been en- 
tirely forgotten. It was clearly and explicitly taught by 
the ancient scientists, and, though in the times of super- 
stition and darkness a popular belief that the earth is 
flat did come to prevail, it was never held even in those 
days by men who had any trace of knowledge at all, or 
did any thinking on the more simple facts of astronomy. 
With the growth of a more general knowledge of an- 
tiquity, as a result of the revival of learning, the ancient 
views began to prevail again. In 1410 Peter d'Ailly had 
collected the opinions of the ancients on the subject with 
an occasional opinion from a medieval source, like Roger 
Bacon, in his book called Imago Mundi, a book which 
was much read and seems to have had a decided influence 
upon Columbus. Probably a still earlier and more de- 
cisive influence upon him was that exerted by the great 
Italian scientist of the time, Toscannelli, who wrote him, 
in 1474, a very interesting letter calling his attention in 
the clearest way to the possibilities which lay in a voyage 



380 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

to the west. 1 Toscannelli's ideas, however, were based, 
like Peter d'Ailly's, upon a study of the ancients. These 
views, derived from the ancient science, were confirmed 
in Columbus's mind by some facts of observation which 
he had gathered from various sources, stories of sailors, 
traditions, and other things of the sort, which tended to 
show the existence of land to the west. 

These facts make it evident then, that, just as in 
the case of the first great step in advance in physical 
science, Copernicus's theory of the solar system, so also 
in the first great enlargement of our practical knowledge 
of the earth itself, the new progress takes its departure 
from a revived knowledge of what the ancient world had 
learned, and that the modern science rests upon the 
ancient. 

But not merely in his sources of knowledge was Colum- 
bus a child of the Renaissance. He was still more clearly 
so in the spirit which moved and sustained him. 

The thing which was especially new and original with 
him, and which led to his great success, was not his 
knowledge of the scientific facts. The whole scientific 
world of his time believed in these as thoroughly as he 
did. But it was this, that, believing in the truth of the 
scientific conclusion, he dared to act upon that belief; it 
was his strong and unwavering self-confidence and daring 
which carried him through to the end. In this he was 
entirely a modern man. But it is necessary to remem- 
ber that no modern explorer of Central Africa or of the 
polar lands has needed to be quite so daring, or to have 
so obstinate a spirit of determination and pluck and will- 
ingness to meet the unexpected and overcome it. The 
modern man has a sort of confidence in the validity of 
science which was not possible for Columbus, and, a thing 
which is still more to the point, he has a knowledge of 

1 A translation of this letter is given in Fiske's Discovery of America, voL 
I» P* 356, and the original in an appendix. 



THE RENAISSANCE 38 1 

the probable dangers which he will have to face, such as 
Columbus could not have. 

In Columbus the Renaissance age is seen not only to 
have recovered the knowledge upon which a new progress 
could be founded, but also it had produced the new spirit, 
the firm confidence of man in his own powers and in his 
mastery of nature, which was both to discover a new 
world in geography and to create a new world in ideas. 
Hardly any man, indeed, who lived in those days is so 
complete a representative of the age as Columbus. It 
was a mixed age, old and new mingled together in strange 
proportions and motley results; old superstitions and 
medieval ideas side by side with scientific criticism and 
modern beliefs. And so it was in the case of Columbus. 
He was a modern man with a strong faith in the results 
of science and a vigorous self-reliance. But he was also a 
medieval man, holding to the scholastic theology, be- 
lieving that the prophets specifically foretold his enter- 
prise, and apparently led to his undertaking quite as much 
by the desire to get the means for a new crusade to rescue 
the Holy Sepulchre as by scientific or commercial motives. 

The effects of Columbus's expedition were not confined 
to science or to commerce. His was a most revolutionary 
discovery, and its intellectual results were as great as its 
practical ones. They were, perhaps, greater than those 
which have followed any other discovery of the sort. 
With them can be compared only the enlargement of 
mind which followed such scientific events as Newton's 
publications, or, in the present century, LyelPs proof of 
the geologic ages, or Darwin's explanation of the method 
of evolution. 

Other events of the same sort combined to produce the 
same character of mind and to make it the prevailing 
intellectual tone of the times — the explorations of the 
Portuguese, the invention of printing, the discoveries of 
new classical material, the wide enlargement of the field 



382 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

of historical knowledge, and the overthrow of old beliefs 
in every direction. These events led not merely to a 
rapid broadening of thought and mental experience, but 
also to a hospitality towards new ideas which is charac- 
teristically modern. 

The intellectual atmosphere which the Renaissance 
produced, and which was an essential prerequisite of the 
Reformation, can be compared, indeed, to nothing so 
well as to that of our own age. In spirit, in ambitions, 
and in methods, in openness of mind and in expectation 
of a greater future it was the same. The obstructive 
conservatism with which it had to contend was identical 
with that of to-day, and the same weapons were in use 
on both sides. In actual attainment and insight, of 
course, it was not the same. The conditions were more 
narrow and the tools it had to work with were far inferior. 
But that is a fact of relatively little importance, and if 
we would gain a right understanding of the age, and of 
its permanent contributions to history, we can do it best, 
perhaps, by comparing it, under its own conditions, with 
the spirit and work of to-day. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE PAPACY IN THE NEW AGE 

In the tenth chapter we followed the conflict between 
the church and the empire to its close in the thirteenth 
century. The papacy had come out of that conflict ap- 
parently victorious over its only rival. Frederick II had 
failed, and no new emperor had arisen to take his place 
with a power which could be at all dangerous to the 
pope's. 

But at the moment of this victory a new enemy ap- 
peared in the field. The growth of commerce, and the 
other results which followed from the crusades, had al- 
ready changed the character of the age, and the general 
attitude of mind toward the papacy. It had raised the 
general level of intelligence and created a new feeling of 
individual self-reliance in large portions of the popula- 
tion, even before the age of the revival of learning proper. 
The gradual organization of the modern nations, and 
their progress, step by step, towards definite constitu- 
tions and true national life, had been accompanied with 
a growth of the spirit of political independence, and the 
beginnings, at least, of a genuine feeling of patriotism. It 
was impossible for the political and intellectual world, 
which was forming under these influences, and which was 
animated by this new spirit, to submit tamely to those 
pretensions of universal political supervision which had 
been asserted by Gregory VII and by Innocent III and 
which the papacy still claimed in even more extreme lan- 
guage. 

383 



384 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

Isolated cases, due to these new influences, of a more 
or less determined resistance to these pretensions are 
scattered through the thirteenth century in the history of 
various states. In the case of exceptionally strong states 
or sovereigns, some are to be found even in the twelfth. 
At the beginning of the fourteenth occurred an instance 
of this resistance which became of universal importance, 
and which, in the final consequences that followed from 
it, united all the new forces of the time in a grand attack 
upon the papacy, to destroy its political power, and even 
to change the character of its ecclesiastical rule. This 
was the conflict between Philip the Fair of France and 
Pope Boniface VIII. 

Boniface VIII was elected pope in 1294, after he had 
procured by his intrigues the abdication of the weak and 
unworldly Celestin V. He was a man of exactly opposite 
character — hasty and obstinate, and with the most ex- 
treme views of the rights of the papacy over all other 
powers in the world. Opportunities were offered him, 
one after another, for the actual assertion of these rights 
in almost every country of Europe, and if he could have 
carried through successfully the things which he at- 
tempted, the papal empire would have existed in reality. 

England and France were, at the time, in the midst of 
that interminable series of wars which grew out of the 
attempts of the French kings to absorb in their growing 
state the territories of their independent vassals, of which 
the kings of England held so large a share. Philip IV, 
the Fair, was one of the ablest of the Capetian kings who 
were carrying on this inherited policy, and, at the same 
time, one of the most unscrupulous and determined. 
The necessities of the war compelled both him and Ed- 
ward I of England to demand taxes from the clergy of 
their kingdoms in a more regular way than had ever been 
done before. It was near the time, as we know, of the 
completion of that economic revolution which substituted 



THE PAPACY IN THE NEW AGE 385 

money for cruder forms of payment in produce and ser- 
vices. Taxation was consequently beginning to assume 
a great importance among the resources of a state. The 
clergy, exempt by universal consent, in view of their 
religious services to the state, from personal military ser- 
vice, had insisted, also, upon an exemption from taxation 
unless the tax were specially sanctioned by themselves 
or by the pope. But the large proportion of the landed 
wealth of the country which was in their hands made the 
question of their submission, like the other classes, to 
the independent taxing power of the state, a very serious 
one for the new governments, especially for one which 
was endeavoring to attain independence of the feudal 
nobles, and neither Philip nor Edward was disposed to 
allow this exemption. Boniface VIII, appealed to by 
some of the clergy in support of their rights, issued his 
bull, " Clericis laicos," in which, in the strongest terms, 
he forbade any prince or state to collect any unauthor- 
ized taxes from the clergy, and commanded all prelates to 
resist such extortion to the utmost. 

The struggle with Philip, begun in this way, involved 
before its close more than one other point concerning 
the right of the pope to interfere in the internal affairs of 
the state. They were the old claims of the papacy pushed 
to an extreme point. The bull, "Unam Sanctam," issued 
in 1302, gives expression in the fullest and plainest terms 
to the theory of papal supremacy and the grounds on 
which it was made to rest. It says: "When the apostles 
said, 'Behold here are two swords!' . . . the Lord did 
not reply that this was too much, but enough. Surely 
he who denies that the temporal sword is in the power of 
Peter wrongly interprets the word of the Lord when He 
says: 'Put up thy sword in its scabbard.' Both swords, 
the spiritual and the material, therefore, are in the power 
of the church; the one, indeed, to be wielded for the 
church, the other by the church; the one by the hand of 



386 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the priest, the other by the hand of kings and knights, 
but at the will and sufferance of the pries t." . . . "For, 
the truth bearing witness, the spiritual power has to estab- 
lish the earthly power, and to judge it if it be not good. 
Thus concerning the church and the ecclesiastical power 
is verified the prophecy of Jeremiah: 'See, I have this day 
set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms/ and 
the other things which follow. Therefore if the earthly 
power err it shall be judged by the spiritual power; but 
if the lesser spiritual power err, by the greater. But if the 
greatest, it can be judged by God alone, not by man, the 
apostle bearing witness. A spiritual man judges all 
things, but he himself is judged by no one. This author- 
ity, moreover, even though it is given to man and exer- 
cised through man, is not human but rather divine, being 
given by divine lips to Peter and founded on a rock for 
him and his successors through Christ himself, whom he 
has confessed; the Lord himself saying to Peter: 'Whatso- 
ever thou shalt bind,' etc. Whoever, therefore, resists 
this power, thus ordained by God, resists the ordination 
of God." . . . "Indeed we declare, announce, and de- 
fine, that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every 
human creature to be subject to the Roman pontiff." 1 

There was nothing particularly new in these preten- 
sions. They had been maintained by the church for the 
last two hundred years. But they were expressed in 
clearer and stronger terms than ever before, and the line 
was drawn sharply between the old claims of the papacy 
and the new spirit of the nations. The significant thing 
about the contest was the answer which the nations made 
to these assertions. 

Philip seems to have realized the new force which he 
had behind him, and he appealed directly to the nation. 
In 1302, as we know, he summoned the first Estates 

1 Translation of Henderson, Hist. Docs, of the Middle Ages, p. 435, where, 
also, a translation of the bull "Clericis laicos" may be found. 



THE PAPACY IN THE NEW AGE 387 

General of France, and submitted to them the papal de- 
mands. Each of the three Estates responded separately, 
supporting the king and denying the right of the pope to 
any supremacy over the state. The clergy, perhaps, took 
this position somewhat reluctantly and with a divided 
allegiance, but it illustrates in a striking way the strength 
of public opinion in favor of the state that they did so at 
all, and many of them undoubtedly supported the king 
from real conviction. 

The result in England was the same. It has been said 
by some that on the point of taxation Edward yielded 
to the pope, but this is certainly a misunderstanding of 
the case. It is true that, in 1297, he effected a temporary 
reconciliation with the church, but immediately afterwards 
he exercised again his asserted right of taxation, and when 
he finally abandoned it he yielded not to the church but 
to the general opposition throughout the nation to the 
exercise of an unconstitutional power, and agreed that no 
orders in the state should be taxed except by their own 
consent. This is a very different thing from recognizing 
the claims of the bull " Clericis laicos," which he distinctly 
refused to do. In 1299, when the pope asserted that 
Scotland was a fief of the papacy and must not be at- 
tacked by the English, Edward showed no disposition 
to yield his rights, and he had the support of the king- 
dom in his resistance. 

One incident of this contest must not be omitted, for it 
is the beginning of an idea which came in time to be of 
the utmost importance. Philip made a formal appeal 
from the pope, on the grounds of Boniface's heresy and 
immorality of life, to a general council and a more lawful 
pope. The appeal, at the moment, came to nothing, but 
the idea that a council had the right to judge of the 
legitimacy of a pope was destined in the next age to be 
the starting-point of a most promising and hopeful at- 
tempt to reconstruct the constitution of the church. 



388 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

The reign of Boniface came to an end with his death, 
in 1303, as the result of an assault upon his person by 
his enemies. He had failed in every attempt which he 
had made to control political affairs wherever the new 
national spirit had begun to be alive. It was the close 
of an epoch in the history of the papacy indeed. The old 
triumphs of the church over the state could no longer be 
repeated. The forces of modern politics, which reduced 
the papacy from the imperial position for which it had 
striven to a political insignificance scarcely less than that 
of the modern Holy Roman Empire, were already be- 
ginning to stir. 

After the death of Boniface, Philip IV determined to 
prevent any recurrence of such a conflict in the future, 
by subjecting the papacy directly to his own power, and, 
after a brief interval, the reign of Benedict XI, he se- 
cured the election of a French prelate, Clement V, and 
the papacy passed for a period of seventy years under 
French influence. The outward sign of this was the re- 
moval of the residence of the popes, and so the practical 
capital of the ecclesiastical world, to Avignon, a city of 
Provence on the borders of France. The college of car- 
dinals was tilled with French prelates, and during a part 
of the time the kings of France, or the French kings of 
Naples, almost openly controlled the papal policy. 

It is not difficult to imagine the result. International 
politics in the modern sense had not yet arisen, but the 
first faint traces were then to be seen of the conflicting 
interests, which were in the course of time, when the in- 
ternal affairs of the states had been brought into more 
settled shape, to lead to modern inter-state politics. The 
nations were beginning to be jealous of one another and 
to fear encroachment. At least each government had 
objects which it was eagerly striving to accomplish within 
its own territories, which other states might aid or with 
which they might interfere. So long as the papacy con- 



THE PAPACY IN THE NEW AGE 389 

tinued to occupy the position of an umpire, above all 
the states and not immediately under the influence of 
any one of them, and so long as it had no manifest political 
interests of its own to serve, it might retain something 
of its imperial position. The spirit of the new nations 
might resent its direct interference in their local affairs, 
but they were not so likely to resent, indeed they would 
be often glad to avail themselves of its international 
influence. The true policy for the papacy to pursue, 
after the rise of the nations, was to keep itself as 
free as it could from all special politics, and to im- 
prove and strengthen in every possible way its interna- 
tional power. 

The papacy at Avignon was, on the contrary, virtually 
a complete abdication of this position. It was almost as 
sudden and final a destruction of the imperial power of 
the popes as the ruin of the Hohenstaufen family had 
been of the imperial position of the German kings. 1 As 
soon as the other states of Europe saw, or thought they 
saw, that the popes were under the control of France, 
that their undisputed ecclesiastical rights, and their 
claims in other directions were being used to serve the 
ends of French politics, that the popes were really the 
tools of the kings of France, then the national spirit was 
roused at once in opposition to papal interference, and 
the popes lost even the respect and obedience of the 
other states. The place in general European affairs, as a 

1 No more is meant by this statement than is said. It is not meant that 
the papacy ceased to be a factor of importance in international politics, as 
one among states, active in the formation of combinations, sought as an 
ally, or interfering with success in the internal affairs of individual states. 
But these things constitute an influence very different from that imperial 
power, as an arbiter above states, which the medieval papacy came near to 
attaining. This distinction between an imperial position for papacy or em- 
pire, and action as a member of a virtual federation of nations, on even 
terms with others, is fundamental and necessary to any understanding of 
the changed conditions of modern as compared with medieval international 
politics. 



39° MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

power above states, from which the papacy descended 
when it went to Avignon it was never able to recover. 
This was in reality due of course to the growth of new 
powers and new conditions, a new general atmosphere, 
which made it impossible to return to the old, but the 
historical facts which brought these new forces to bear 
upon the papal demands were the defeat of Boniface in 
his conflict with Philip, and the consequent "Babylonian 
captivity" at Avignon. 

England, for example, was at war with France during 
nearly the whole of this period, and the feeling that the 
papacy was the close ally of her enemy had something 
beyond question to do with the repeated and stringent 
measures which were taken in the reign of Edward III, 
to limit the right of the pope to interfere even in the 
ecclesiastical affairs of the country, in the statute of 
"provisors" against his right to make appointments to 
English benefices, and of " praemunire" against appeals to 
the papal courts, and in the refusal of the nation to pay 
any longer the annual tribute which was the mark of the 
feudal dependence of England upon the papacy, estab- 
lished by the homage of King John. 

Still more clearly does this appear in the case of Ger- 
many. When the Avignonese popes, John XXII and 
Benedict XII, asserted their right to decide a disputed 
election, or to determine the right to the throne of a 
regularly elected candidate, manifestly in the interest of 
the political ambition of the king of France, then even 
weakened and divided Germany was aroused by the spirit 
of national independence and rejected with decision the 
pope's dictation. The electors drew up a solemn dec- 
laration, in 1338, which in the same year received the 
sanction of a numerously attended diet at Frankfort, re- 
citing that the king derived his right to rule from God 
alone and not from the pope, and that his regular election 
carried with it the full power to exercise all the preroga- 



THE PAPACY IN THE NEW AGE 39 1 

tives of king and emperor, whatever rights of crowning 
and consecration might justly belong to the pope. 1 

But other results of the captivity at Avignon threatened 
the papacy with a far more serious disaster than the loss 
of its political influence. Grave discontent began to 
arise, and earnest criticism began to be heard within the 
church itself against the papal position and policy. The 
progress of events increased this feeling and gave it 
stronger and more manifest grounds until, for a short 
time, it threatened to overthrow even the ecclesiastical 
supremacy of the pope, and to revolutionize the entire 
constitution of the church. 

Increasing luxury and nepotism were characteristic of 
the papacy at Avignon. The wasteful extravagance of a 
court, far more like that of a prodigal sovereign of the 
world than of a Christian bishop, demanded an increased 
income to meet its abnormally heavy expenses. The war 
which the popes were carrying on in Italy was exceedingly 
costly. The ordinary revenues would not suffice. They 
had indeed proved insufficient in the thirteenth century, 
from general financial causes which still continued to 
operate, and the ingenuity of successive popes needed to 
be exercised to devise new forms of taxation, or rather 
new expedients by which money could be exacted from 
the clergy of Europe. This necessity led to a great en- 
largement of the papal right of appointment to local 
benefices throughout the Catholic world, a method of 
extortion which was doubly offensive, not merely because 
of the large sums thus exacted in annates and other fees, 
but also because of its interference with the independence 
and self-government of the local churches. The practice 
excited no little outcry and opposition. It had a de- 
cisive influence in leading to the adoption of the statutes 
against such practices in England under Edward III, and 

1 There is a translation in Henderson, p. 437, of the document adopted at 
Frankfort. 



392 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

elsewhere ecclesiastical bodies made strong protest and 
drew up formal declarations against the rights assumed 
by the popes. 

This spirit of discontent and criticism was strengthened 
from another side. Earnest minds could not fail to con- 
demn, as contrary to a genuine Christianity, the luxury 
and immorality which prevailed at Avignon and influ- 
enced the whole church from that centre. WyclifiVs 
party in England drew no little aid from the prevalence 
of this feeling. But an earlier rebellion in the church 
on this point had been attended with even more extreme 
views. A body within the Franciscan order, earnestly 
devoted to a simple and spiritual life, had adopted an 
idea which implied that, following the example of Christ 
and the apostles, "evangelical poverty" was a Christian 
duty demanded of all the clergy, and with this they held 
other equally revolutionary notions. Condemned by the 
popes as heretics, the more irreconcilable of them, with 
some others of like mind, took refuge with Lewis of Ba- 
varia, who gathered about him in this way a small literary 
army, far more logical and thorough in their opposition 
to the papal demands than he was himself. In his ser- 
vice, the ablest of these writers, William of Ockham and 
Marsiglio of Padua, proclaimed doctrines which were 
revolutionary not merely of the world's ecclesiastical 
government of that time, but also of its political gov- 
ernments, and which were in many remarkable ways 
anticipations of ideas which have come to prevail in mod- 
ern times. On the special point at issue between Lewis 
and the pope, they denied in the clearest terms the right 
of the pope to centre in himself the powers of the church, 
and maintained the superiority of a general council. 

During the residence of the popes at Avignon, there 
was, therefore, a growing dissatisfaction and spirit of 
criticism both within and without the ranks of the clergy, 
a disposition to question the right of the papacy as an 



THE PAPACY IN THE NEW AGE 393 

absolute monarchy over the church, as well as to deny its 
right to assume the direction of political affairs. With 
the rise of this spirit there were heard also, a still more 
significant fact, clear demands for a general council to 
judge and control the pope. But as yet these signs of 
coming civil war had been seen only here and there, 
connected with special cases of dispute between the pope 
and some particular opponent. Men's minds had been 
somewhat familiarized with these new theories of church 
government, as possibilities, but there was as yet no gen- 
eral acceptance of them, no European demand for a uni- 
versal council to exercise supreme functions in the church, 
and to take the papacy under its control. It was the 
Great Schism, and the events connected with it, the 
period in church history which followed the Babylonian 
captivity at Avignon, which transformed these isolated 
demands for a general council, used as a weapon in 
special contests with the papacy, as a threat to be held 
over the pope, into a strong demand of all Europe which 
could not be resisted. 

It was the condition of affairs in Italy, rather than 
any sense of duty to the church universal, which moved 
Gregory XI in 1377 to return from Avignon to Rome. 
The absence of the popes had thrown the papal states into 
anarchy and confusion. Revolution and counter-revo- 
lution had followed one another in rapid succession, now 
democratic in spirit and again papal — it was in this 
period that the experiments of Rienzo were made — and 
Gregory XI feared that his power in Italy would be en- 
tirely lost if he did not attempt its recovery in person. 
But the French cardinals were not reconciled to the 
change. They were not willing to leave the luxury and 
quiet of Avignon and to subject themselves to the tumul- 
tuous rudeness of Rome. The loud demand of the Romans 
that an Italian pope should be elected, on the death of 
Gregory XI in 1378, and popular tumults connected with 



394 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the election of Urban VI, gave them an opportunity to 
assert that the election had been forced upon them by 
bodily fear and was not therefore a free and legal elec- 
tion. On this ground they withdrew from Rome — in the 
end all the cardinals who had elected Urban abandoned 
him — and elected one of their own number pope, who 
took the name of Clement VII, and returned to Avignon. 
Urban on his side created a number of Italian cardinals, 
and the papacy had now two heads as well as two capitals. 
The nations of Europe chose sides almost solely as their 
political interests led them. France, of course, supported 
Clement; England, of course, supported Urban. Naples 
could not help opposing the Roman pope, nor Germany 
the pope who was under the influence of France. There 
were not merely two popes and two capitals, but the whole 
church was rent in twain, and the question whether there 
was in the church, as distinguished from the pope, a 
power to reorganize its government and to compel even 
the papacy to submit to reformation, was forced upon 
the attention of every man who had any interest in public 
affairs. 

In the prevailing temper of the time, the discussion of 
this question showed a rapid tendency to break with the 
traditions and historical theories of the church. It was a 
time when the ties of the church universal seem to have 
been loosed in every direction and new and strange no- 
tions in theology and concerning practical religion made 
their appearance on every hand. Wild dreams and ideas 
that would one day bear good fruit were mingled together 
— Wy cliff e and the Beguines, the Brethren of the Com- 
mon Life and the Flagellants, and many forgotten names 
of the sort, good and bad. It was a favorable atmosphere 
for the rapid growth of revolutionary schemes for the 
settlement of the difficulty which the Schism forced upon 
the church. The whole tendency for centuries in the 
ecclesiastical world had been to centre the life and power 



THE PAPACY IN THE NEW AGE 395 

of the church more and more completely in the pope. 
The doctrine of papal infallibility and of the pope's abso- 
lute headship of the church may not have been so explicitly 
stated as a necessary article of faith as now, but it was 
practically no less clearly held or firmly believed by the 
general body of churchmen. In the circumstances of 
the time, this historical tendency was forgotten by many. 
It was argued that it mattered little how many popes 
there were. There might be ten or twelve. Each land 
might have its own independent pope. It might be the 
will of God that the papacy should remain permanently 
divided. 1 

But the ideas which won the general acceptance of 
Europe were not so extreme as these, though really as 
revolutionary. A group of earnest and able men, of 
whom John Gerson, of the University of Paris, is the 
best known, began to advance ideas which, though they 
broke with the special form which the unity of the church 
had been assuming in the headship of the pope, did not 
break with the real spirit of that unity. They conse- 
quently furnished a more solid doctrinal foundation for 
the new plan of reformation than was possible for the 
wilder ideas of others, and commanded general approval 
for it. According to these theories, the church universal 
is superior to the pope. It may elect him if the cardinals 
fail to do so; it may depose one whom the cardinals have 
elected. The pope is an officer of the church, and, if he 
abuses his office, he may be treated as an enemy, as a 
temporal prince would be in a similar case. The highest 
expression of the unity and power of this church universal 
is a general council. This is superior to the pope, may 
meet legitimately without his summons, and he must 
obey its decisions. 

1 The first volume of Pastor's Geschichte der Papste, which contains a very 
valuable account of this crisis in the history of the papacy from the Catholic 
point of view, has been translated into English. 



396 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

The first attempt to carry into practice the appeal from 
the pope to a general council, and so to end the Schism, 
was in the Council of Pisa, in 1409. Long negotiations 
for the purpose of restoring peace to the church in some 
other way had failed. The attempt to get both popes to 
abdicate, and so make way for the election of a new pope 
for the whole church, had shortly before seemed about to 
succeed. Each of the two popes — Benedict XIII, of 
Avignon, and Gregory XII, of Rome — had been elected 
under solemn promise to resign if his opponent could be 
brought to do the same. But neither was willing to take 
the first step, and it soon became evident that the Schism 
could not be healed in this way. France then withdrew 
its support from Benedict, who took refuge in Spain. The 
majority of the cardinals of both popes abandoned their 
masters and united in a call for a general council to as- 
semble in Pisa in 1409. 

But the Council of Pisa did not command universal 
acceptance. Political and other considerations had re- 
tained a few states in the obedience of each of the popes. 
The council was itself injudicious and hasty, and did not 
sufficiently fortify its position against obvious objections. 
It deposed the two contending popes and sanctioned the 
election of a new one by the cardinals present, Alexan- 
der V — who died in 1410, and was succeeded by John 
XXIII — but it separated without providing for the real 
reformation of the church. 

The situation was in reality made worse by this first 
attempt to heal the Schism than it had been before. 
There were now three popes, each claiming to be the sole 
rightful pope, and each recognized as such by some part 
of the church. But the council of Pisa had served the 
great purpose of bringing out, more clearly than ever 
before, the arguments on which its right to act rested, 
and of convincing Europe at large that, if it could be 
properly managed, a really universal council, as the voice 



THE PAPACY IN THE NEW AGE 397 

of the united church, was the proper method of solving 
the difficulty. 

In the next stage of events the emperor-elect, Sigis- 
mund, as representing, upon the political side, the unity 
of Christendom, took a leading part. The political sit- 
uation in Italy forced John XXIII to depend upon the 
emperor's aid, and Sigismund was therefore able to make 
the representatives of the pope agree to a council which 
was to meet in the imperial city of Constance, and so 
outside of Italy, on November i, 1414. This agreement 
Sigismund made haste to announce to all Europe and to 
invite proper persons from all states to be present. After 
a fruitless attempt to change the place of meeting, John 
was compelled to acquiesce, and a few weeks later issued 
a formal summons for the council. 

Sanctioned in this way by the Roman emperor and by 
the pope whom the greater part of the church recog- 
nized, and supported by the deep and universal desire 
of Europe for union and reformation, the council which 
assembled at Constance was to all intents and purposes 
a universal one, and appeared to have a most encourag- 
ing prospect of success. Its membership reached five 
thousand. All Europe was represented from the begin- 
ning, with insignificant exceptions. Its spirit, too, was 
in contrast with that of the Council of Pisa. While reso- 
lutely determined to do away with the Schism, it was 
directed with caution and good judgment. 

John XXIII failed to control the council as he had 
hoped to do, and was finally forced to recognize its right 
to depose him. This was done on May 29, 141 5. On 
July 4th the council listened to the abdication, voluntary 
in form, of Gregory XII. Benedict XIII refused to ab- 
dicate, but finally his supporters all withdrew from his 
obedience and joined the council, and on July 26, 141 7, 
he was formally deposed. 

The church was now reunited in a way that was satis- 



398 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

factory to all Christendom, but it was without a head, 
and measures of moral reform were still to be adopted. 
The council was thus brought to the necessity of decid- 
ing a question upon which there was the widest differ- 
ence of opinion — whether it should proceed first to the 
election of a pope or to a thorough reformation of the 
abuses in the government of the church, of which there 
was so general complaint. The earnest reform party, 
supported by the emperor, desired to make sure of the 
reformation before the choice of a pope. The cardinals, 
less interested in reformation and fearing a diminution 
of their influence, demanded the immediate election of a 
pope. They were supported by the Italian representa- 
tives and by many who really desired reform, but in 
whom the conservative feeling of the necessity of a head 
to the real constitution of the church was a stronger 
motive. The reform efforts of the council were greatly 
weakened by dissension. Various parties urged special 
measures of their own which were not acceptable to 
others. Local and national interests were opposed to 
one another. Political influences were also at work and 
agreement on details seemed impossible. Finally a com- 
promise was adopted. Certain reform measures on which 
all could unite were to be first decreed by the council and 
then a pope was to be elected. In accordance with this 
agreement five such reform decrees were adopted in Octo- 
ber, 141 7, and on November nth the cardinals, to whom 
the council had added thirty representatives, chosen from 
its membership for this purpose, elected a new pope, 
who took the name of Martin V. 

The new pope was able to prevent any further action 
of importance by the council, and it dissolved on April 
22, 1418, having reunited the church but not having 
reformed it. The most important of the general reform 
measures which it had adopted was one providing for 
the regular recurrence of such general councils, the first 



THE PAPACY IN THE NEW AGE 399 

in five years, the second in seven, and thereafter at inter- 
vals of ten years. Could this decree have been enforced, 
together with the declarations of the council adopted in 
its early sessions of the superiority of a general council 
over the pope, giving expression to ideas very generally 
prevalent at the time, the whole constitution of the 
church would have been changed and all its subsequent 
history would have been different. The later absolutism 
of the pope would have been impossible, the papacy 
would have been transformed into a limited monarchy, 
and the supreme power would have been a representative 
assembly meeting at regular intervals, and having final 
legislative and judicial authority. But so favorable a 
moment as that presented by the Council of Constance 
for accomplishing this result never recurred, and the 
failure of that council to secure the subjection of the 
pope was fatal to the plan. 

The first two councils, provided for by the decree of 
the Council of Constance, met at the appointed time but 
were able to accomplish nothing. The first was held at 
Pavia, in 1423, but was very thinly attended, and, though 
it manifested the same desire to limit the power of the 
pope, Martin V dissolved it before it had adopted any 
important measures. It selected Basel as the place for 
the meeting of the next council, which would assemble 
in 1 43 1. At that time the threatening successes of the 
Hussites and the apparent impossibility of overcoming 
them by force seemed to make a general council espe- 
cially necessary, but the attendance at its opening was 
small and became at no time large. Its spirit, however, 
was most determined and its measures most thorough- 
going. It gave itself a democratic organization by ad- 
mitting the lower clergy to an equal vote with the higher; 
it reaffirmed the decrees of the Council of Constance in 
regard to the superiority of a council over the pope; 
denied his right to dissolve the council without its own 



400 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

consent; declared that the payment of annates and of 
all fees to the pope on appointment to benefices should 
cease; provided for local synods to carry throughout the 
church the idea of government by councils; attempted to 
change the method of electing the popes by the cardinals ; 
and assumed the right to exercise in several points special 
papal prerogatives. But it did not gain general recog- 
nition for these assumptions. The pope, Eugenius IV, 
after a premature attempt to dissolve it, had been com- 
pelled by political considerations for some time to recog- 
nize it as a council, but finally he was able to declare it 
dissolved and to open another council under his own con- 
trol in Italy. The Council of Basel in turn deposed the 
pope and elected one of its own in his place. But the 
more influential of the prelates gradually went over to 
the side of Pope Eugenius. The council degenerated 
rapidly, and finally disappeared, a complete failure. 

One other phase of this later contest is of considerable 
interest. At the moment when the discord between the 
Council of Basel and the pope threatened a new schism 
in the church, France and Germany took advantage of 
the opportunity to declare in advance their neutrality 
in the coming struggle, and to signify their acceptance of 
such decrees of the council as would secure a good de- 
gree of independence to their national churches. The 
French national synod, held at Bourges, in 1438, recog- 
nized the superior authority of councils, declared that 
they ought to be held every ten years, enacted that reser- 
vations to the pope of ecclesiastical appointments, an- 
nates, and appeals to Rome in ordinary cases should 
cease, and adopted measures of moral reform. The fol- 
lowing year very similar provisions were adopted for 
Germany by the Diet at Mainz. Such a result was in 
truth a natural consequence of the position taken by the 
councils and of the general current of opinion which had 
supported them, and if that position had been success- 



THE PAPACY IN THE NEW AGE 401 

fully established and the constitution of the church per- 
manently modified, it would inevitably have led to the 
formation of locally independent and self-governing na- 
tional churches. As it was, this attempt also came to 
nothing. 1 

This movement for national independence indicates 
the real significance of the crisis through which the church 
had passed. It had been a most serious danger to the 
papacy, looked at from the point of view of its historical 
development as an ecclesiastical power. Drawing its 
strength and life undoubtedly from the same sources 
from which the great political movement whose history 
we have followed had drawn, brought about in fact by the 
same forces as those which had constructed the new na- 
tions transferred now to the sphere of ecclesiastical govern- 
ment, this movement strove to work the same revolution 
there which had been worked in temporal governments. 
Unconscious of course of this relationship, unconscious also 
very largely of the end which would have been reached, 
but with a growing clearness of apprehension, this revo- 
lution threatened to transform as completely the Roman 
Catholic monarchy as it had transformed that other great 
medieval creation, the feudal system. The peculiar sit- 
uation of things within the church — the Babylonian cap- 
tivity and the Great Schism — gave an opportunity for 
the translation of the political ideas of the age into eccle- 

1 The French church retained some independence, more to the advantage 
of the king, however, than of the church. In 1682, in consequence of a 
quarrel between Louis XIV and the pope over the right of the king to make 
appointments in the church, an assembly of the French clergy adopted the 
Four Articles of the Gallican church. These asserted, 1, that the power of 
the pope is wholly spiritual and that kings cannot be deposed by him; 2, 
that popes are subject to the decisions of general councils; 3, that popes 
must govern according to the accepted laws of the church, and, especially, 
according to the rights of the Gallican church; and 4, that decisions of the 
popes in matters of faith have only a temporary force, and, to become per- 
manently binding, must be accepted by a general council. These seem like 
a reaffirmation of the principles of the councils but they established no real 
independence. 



402 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

siastical ideas. The growing importance of the repre- 
sentative system — of Diets and Estates General — in na- 
tional governments made the appeal to a general council 
in the government of the church seem a perfectly natural 
recourse in time of difficulty, especially to lawyers, and 
university teachers, and even to the great lay public. It 
might not seem so simple and manifest an expedient to 
those immediately concerned in the government of the 
church and directly interested in its traditions or devoted 
to them. But the strength of the reform movement was 
not drawn from the world of the cardinals and great 
prelates, but from the universities and the doctors, and 
the non-ecclesiastical world. 

This movement was, in truth, strong enough to have 
succeeded, and it almost succeeded. If the Council of 
Constance had continued to the end cautious and well- 
managed, if there could have come to the front some 
great leader, strong enough to have persuaded its mem- 
bers to lay aside their local differences for the general 
cause, and to hold back outside political interests from 
interference, and who could have defined clearly the 
specific measures necessary to realize the policy which 
unquestionably the majority desired, he could have suc- 
ceeded in all probability in remodelling the government 
of the church. It seems an almost unparalleled fact that 
the crisis did not produce such a leader. 

It may be objected that such a revolution would have 
been too sudden to effect a permanent reform, that only 
those revolutions are really successful which are the cul- 
mination, however sudden in appearance, of a long pre- 
pared change. The principle is certainly correct, but the 
application here is doubtful, for the line of preparation is 
manifestly to be traced not in the ecclesiastical but in the 
political world. 

Knowing, as we do now, the events which followed on 
so rapidly in the history of the church — the revolution so 



THE PAPACY IN THE NEW AGE 403 

much more violent and far-reaching of the sixteenth cen- 
tury — we cannot help asking the question: What would 
have been the result had the Council of Constance suc- 
ceeded where it failed? and allowing the imagination to 
answer. It seems certain that one result would have 
been the formation of a government for the church like 
that which was taking shape at the same time in England, 
a limited monarchy with a legislature gradually gaining 
more and more the real control of affairs. It seems al- 
most equally certain that with this the churches of each 
nationality would have gained a large degree of local in- 
dependence and the general government of the church 
have assumed by degrees the character of a great federal 
and constitutional state. If this had been the case, it is 
hard to see why all the results which were accomplished 
by the reformation of Luther might not have been at- 
tained as completely without that violent disruption of 
the church, which was necessary and unavoidable as the 
church was then constituted. Whether that would have 
been on the whole a better result may be left without 
discussion. 

If this is in a way fanciful history, the results which 
did follow were real enough. The theory of the papal 
supremacy was too strongly established in the church to 
be overthrown by an opposing theory only half-believed 
in by its supporters. The logic of the papal position is 
immensely strong if its starting-point be accepted, and 
to the great body of the leading churchmen of the times, 
whose training was wholly in speculative and theoretical 
lines, it seemed in the end invincible. It would have 
demanded a more united and abler commanded attack to 
have destroyed it. The only result of the attempt, so 
far as the church constitution is concerned, was to make 
the position of the papal absolutism stronger than it had 
been before, and to bring to an end forever any serious 
opposition to it. The next great council, that of Trent, 



404 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

which was so completely under the control of the pope 
as to give ground for the sneer that the Holy Spirit by 
which it was inspired came every day from Rome in a 
mail-bag, was the legitimate successor of the Council of 
Constance; and the dogma of papal infallibility, pro- 
claimed by the Council of the Vatican, in 1870, was only 
an official formulation of the principle established when 
the movement for reformation by councils in the fifteenth 
century failed. 

The fact that the Council of Constance did actually 
appear to depose popes and to provide during a brief 
interval for the government of the church gives the 
Catholic theologian of to-day who maintains the tradi- 
tional position but little difficulty. In his eyes, Gregory 
XII was the only one of the three popes who had a right- 
ful title. The assembly at Constance was no real general 
council, only a synod, until Gregory issued his bull of 
convocation, and its acts passed before that date, includ- 
ing its declaration of the superior power of a council, are 
all wanting in legislative validity. By convoking the 
council and then abdicating his office Gregory relieved 
the church from great embarrassment, and first gave to the 
council a legitimate position, so that it could act with 
some prospect of success for the reunion of the church. 
By accepting the acts of Gregory, the council formally 
recognized him as the only legitimate pope, and, by infer- 
ence, with him his predecessors during the Schism. 1 Thus 
the theory is perfectly preserved. Whatever right the 
council had in the premises it got not by virtue of its 
existence as a general council, but indirectly, from the 
concessions of the pope. 

For the moral reformation of the church the age of 
the councils accomplished nothing of real value. Most 
of the old abuses of which the people complained re- 
mained unchecked. Avarice and immorality continued, 
1 Pastor, Geschichte der P&pste, vol. I, pp. 154-155. 



THE PAPACY IN THE NEW AGE 405 

unabashed, in the papal court, and before the close of the 
century the papacy was to reach a depth of moral deg- 
radation equalled only in the tenth century. A consid- 
erable proportion of the clergy throughout Europe imi- 
tated the practices of Italy, and, heedless of the warnings 
they were constantly receiving, continued to strengthen 
the current of rebellion. 

Politically the position of the papacy was greatly 
changed, but it remained no less controlled, perhaps even 
more controlled, by political considerations. The day 
when it could hope to carry out the plans of Gregory 
VII, and Innocent III, and Boniface VIII, and to estab- 
lish a monarchy, imperial in the political as it was in 
the ecclesiastical world, would never return again. But 
the pope was a king as well as a bishop. He was the 
temporal sovereign of a little state in Italy. With the 
rise of international politics and the beginning of the mod- 
ern conflict of state with state for European suprem- 
acy which we have already noticed, Italy was the first 
battle-ground of all nations. It was the practically un- 
occupied piece of ground lying first at hand in which 
each might hope to gain some great advantage over the 
others. In this struggle of armies and diplomacy the 
popes had an immediate and vital interest. They must 
enter into it on the same footing and with the same 
weapons as Austria or Spain, and this necessity of con- 
stantly striving to preserve the independence of their 
little kingdom in the turmoil of European politics, or to 
recover it when lost, has been a controlling element in 
the papal policy down to the present time, a perpetu- 
ally harassing and disabling necessity, judged from the 
point of view of its religious position. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE REFORMATION 

By the beginning of the sixteenth century the middle 
ages had come to an end in almost every line of civili- 
zation. Politically, economically, and intellectually the 
new forces and the new methods had possession of the 
field. The old were not yet beaten at every point. On 
many matters of detail much fighting had yet to be 
done. In some places, perhaps, the old succeeded in 
maintaining itself, or even in recovering ground. But 
on the main issues, everywhere, the victory had been won 
— with one most important exception. The church was 
unchanged. It had remained unaffected by the new 
forces which had transformed everything else. It was 
still thoroughly medieval. In government, in doctrine, 
and in life it still placed the greatest emphasis upon those 
additions which the peculiar conditions of the middle ages 
had built upon the foundation of the primitive Chris- 
tianity, and it was determined to remain unchanged. 

This was not because no attempt had been made to 
transform it. It was entirely impossible that it should 
have passed through such an era of change as that which 
followed the crusades without coming into contact and 
conflict with the new forces. We have seen the attempt 
which was made, at the beginning of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, at the Council of Constance, to bring over into the 
sphere of ecclesiastical government the institutions and 
ideas which had been produced in the course of the polit- 
ical transformation, which was then under way, and to 

406 



THE REFORMATION 407 

make over the government of the church in harmony 
with the new age. That attempt failed completely, and 
its only effect had been to strengthen the government of 
the church in its medievalism. 

In the line of theological belief and of life we have not 
followed the attempts which had been made before the 
Reformation to bring about a change, but they had not 
been wanting, and they had not lacked clearness of pur- 
pose or earnestness. 

In the thirteenth century, beginning perhaps a trifle 
earlier, in the valley of the Rhone, there had been a re- 
volt from the church upon these points which had never 
been entirely subdued. It was the region of an early 
and a brilliant civilization, the land of the troubadours. 
An active intellectual life and an inquiring spirit appar- 
ently existed there in all classes, 1 and a line of connection 
with earlier forms of heresy probably gave direction to a 
revolt which would have occurred without it. Two sects 
must be distinguished from one another in the same gen- 
eral region — the Albigenses, more directly interested in 
questions of theology, and considered heretics by Prot- 
estants as well as Catholics, and the Waldenses, or Vau- 
dois, chiefly concerned with religious questions and the 
conduct of life, and orthodox in theology according to 
Protestant standards. In the case of the Albigenses the 
church was able to make use of political assistance, and 
a civil war of some years' duration resulted in the exter- 
mination of the heretics, and finally in the annexation of 
the county of Toulouse by the crown of France. The 
Waldenses, in a more remote country, in the valleys of 
eastern Switzerland and Savoy, survived a persecution 
which was both severe and long continued. Through 
their earnest devotion to the study of the Bible in the 
vernacular, they exercised a considerable influence in 
many lands of continental Europe, though their share in 

1 Comba, Waldenses, p. 15. 



408 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the general pre-reformation movement has sometimes 
been greatly exaggerated. They seem to have received 
some new impulse themselves from the followers of Huss, 
and when the Reformation finally came they acknowl- 
edged the similarity of its principles with their own, and 
frequently associated themselves with Protestant organ- 
izations of a Calvinistic type. 

While this more or less revolutionary movement was 
under way, there occurred, within the church and in har- 
mony with it, another like it in its emphasis of the simpler 
Christian life, chiefly of the ascetic type, which should 
not be overlooked. The two great mendicant orders, the 
Franciscans and the Dominicans, both officially recognized 
before 1225, represent a true monastic revival of the re- 
ligious life, like the reformation of Cluny in the tenth cen- 
tury or of the Cistercians in the twelfth. Vowed to ex- 
treme poverty and devoting themselves with a genuine 
enthusiasm to the service of the poorest classes and to re- 
ligious ministrations, the mendicants did a great amount 
of practical good. Before very long both orders became 
wealthy and corrupt; both took eager part in the intel- 
lectual work of the century in the new universities; but 
nothing should obscure the fact that in their early history 
they stand for a real reformation and are a sign of the 
religious tendencies of the time. 

A hundred and fifty years after the rise of the Wal- 
denses, in the last half of the fourteenth century, a revolt 
of the same kind occurred in England. It was at the time 
of England's first great literary age — the time of Chaucer 
and Gower and Langland. It closely followed an age of 
great military glory — the victories of Crecy and of Poi- 
tiers and almost as glorious victories over the Scotch. 
The lower classes, as well as others, felt the stimulus of 
such an age, and, in Wat Tyler's insurrection, demanded 
the reform of old abuses and new guarantees for their 
security. It is possible that even without the vigorous 



THE REFORMATION 409 

leadership of Wycliffe so favorable an age would have pro- 
duced a demand for a religious reformation. As it was, 
the demand which was made seems almost wholly the 
result of his personal influence, of his earnest spirit and 
his deeply inquiring mind. In Wy cliff e's work there was 
an attempted reformation of theology and of religion, of 
Christian doctrines and of the Christian life in about 
equal proportions, and, from the peculiar situation of 
things in England, it involved political ideas not neces- 
sarily connected with the others. It has been said that 
Wycliffe " disowned and combated almost every distin- 
guishing feature of the medieval and papal church, as 
contrasted with the Protestant." 1 His "poor priests" 
undoubtedly were messengers of good to the poorer 
classes, and the fact that so large a number of manu- 
scripts as one hundred and sixty-five, containing larger or 
smaller parts of his translation of the Scriptures, has been 
found, shows conclusively how widely the copies were 
circulated and how carefully they were preserved. The 
division of political parties in England during Wycliffe' s 
life served to protect him and his followers from serious 
persecution; but after the accession of the House of Lan- 
caster to the throne this reason no longer existed, and the 
church had her way with the heretics. In 1401 the first 
English statute was passed punishing wrong theological 
opinions with death, 2 and, in the few years following, the 
Lollards, as Wycliffe' s followers were called, were appar- 
ently exterminated. 

If it is doubtful whether Wycliffe's influence may not 
have died out in England, certainly it was continued 
upon the Continent in the last great religious rebellion 
against the medieval church which preceded Luther's. 

1 Fisher, Reformation, p. 60. 

2 Down to this time there had been no heresy of importance in England. 
On the influence of Wycliffe on the later religious history of England see 
Poole, Wycliffe, p. 118, and Gairdner, Lollardy and the Reformation in En- 
gland. 



4IO MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

The close connection which was established between the 
English and Bohemian courts, and between the Univer- 
sities of Prague and Oxford, as a result of the marriage 
of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia, brought some Bo- 
hemian students into contact with Wycliffe's teachings 
and led to the carrying of his writings to their fatherland. 
The reform movement which resulted in Bohemia, whose 
leader was John Huss, followed in all essential matters 
the ideas of Wycliffe, but it placed the strongest emphasis 
upon other points, such, for example, as the communion 
in two kinds, from which one wing of the Hussites, the 
Utraquists, derived its name. Huss himself did not lay 
so much stress, perhaps, upon the translation of the Scrip- 
tures into the language of the people, but his appeal to the 
Bible as the final authority in questions of belief, and his 
assertion of his right to judge of its meaning for himself, 
were clear and emphatic, and his followers were as ear- 
nest translators as Wycliffe or the Waldensians could have 
desired. Huss and his disciple, Jerome of Prague, were 
burned at the stake by the Council of Constance, in 141 5, 
but political reasons, the unending strife between the Slav 
and the German in part, gave his cause so much strength 
in Bohemia that, after twenty years of desperate warfare 
the revolt was ended by a compromise, and the church 
gave way to the Hussites to a certain extent, in the points 
of practice upon which they insisted most strongly. 

These three are the most prominent of the attempts at 
reformation which were made before Luther. They were 
all very limited in their influence. None of them had 
anything more than an indirect effect upon the larger 
pre-reformation movement, upon the general demand for 
reform, and the general preparation for Luther's work 
which was being made, and which showed itself so plainly 
when the time came. They were rather signs that such 
a demand was arising than causes of its gathering strength. 
They were the most prominent signs of this under-current, 



THE REFORMATION 411 

but by no means the only ones. There is abundance of 
evidence from the fifteenth century, in the case of indi- 
viduals or small bodies of men— sometimes the taint was 
apparently almost national, and excited the alarm of the 
church, 1 or affected ecclesiastical officers of high rank — 
evidence of dissatisfaction with the practical Christian- 
ity of the day, or of a leaning toward theological explana- 
tions almost or quite Protestant in character. These 
cases, are, however, mostly independent of one another, 
and independent of the larger revolts which have been 
noticed. Nor upon Luther himself did these attempted 
reformations have any influence. All the positions which 
were afterwards taken by him, which brought him into a 
necessary conflict with the Roman church, he had taken 
before he knew anything essential of the work of his fore- 
runners in the same line. 

If these premature rebellions against the medieval 
church were not among the immediate influences lead- 
ing to the Reformation, they were certainly of the same 
essential nature. Two features which are characteristic 
of them all are of great significance in this direction. 
They all asserted that the Christianity of their time 
differed in some important particulars from the primi- 
tive Christianity, and that a return must be made to the 
earlier usage. They differed somewhat from one another 
in the particulars selected, but all alike asserted the im- 
portant principle that the original Christianity is the 
ultimate standard, and that the professions of every age 
must be judged by it, as recorded in the Scriptures. In 
the second place, they all demanded that the right of 
every individual Christian to study the Bible and to 
reach his own conclusions should be recognized by the 
church. These two principles — the appeal to the origi- 

1 See the discovery of evidence which indicates a wide-spread demand 
among the bishops of Spain for reformation on the same lines as Luther's, 
referred to in the London Academy, 1893, p. 197. 



412 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

nal sources and the right of individual investigation — 
were established in the intellectual world by the Renais- 
sance, but it is of the utmost importance to bear in mind 
the fact that they had both been definitely asserted, and 
with a more or less clear consciousness, in the line of 
religious advancement before the influence of the Re- 
naissance began to be felt. It will be necessary to return 
to this point when we reach the beginning of the Refor- 
mation proper. 

But all these attempts at reformation in the church, 
large and small, had failed, as had those of the early 
fifteenth century to reform its government, leaving the 
church as thoroughly medieval in doctrine and in practical 
religion as it was in polity. It was the one power, there- 
fore, belonging to the middle ages which still stood unaf- 
fected by the new forces and opposed to them. In other 
directions the changes had been many, here nothing had 
been changed. And its resisting power was very great. 
Endowed with large wealth, strong in numbers in every 
state, with no lack of able and thoroughly trained minds, 
its interests, as it regarded them, in maintaining the old 
were enormous, and its power of defending itself seemed 
scarcely to be broken. 

In this state of things is to be found the explanation of 
the fact that the reformation of the church was so much 
more revolutionary and violent than the corresponding 
change in other directions. Everywhere else the same 
revolution had really been wrought. In some cases there 
had been an appeal to revolutionary methods in matters 
of detail, but, in the main, the change had been a gradual 
transformation by which the new had been, almost uncon- 
sciously, put in place of the old. But the church had 
been strong enough to resist successfully any gradual 
transformation or any change of details; it remained an 
absolute theocracy in matters of doctrine and of practice, 
so that when the change did come, it necessarily came sud- 



THE REFORMATION 413 

denly and violently, and with incomplete results. The 
new forces had not been destroyed because they had been 
prevented from producing their natural results. They 
had been merely dammed up until they gathered an ir- 
resistible weight. 

Nor was the preparation for the Reformation confined 
to the religious and the ecclesiastical. The discontent 
under the injustice and abuses in the management of 
the church; the demand for a moral reformation in the 
lives of the clergy; the feeling, less definite and con- 
scious but still not slight, of opposition to the absolutism 
of the papacy; and the still less clearly formulated but 
deep-seated dissatisfaction with the mechanical and for- 
mal Christianity of the church, as being untrue to its 
original spiritual character, these feelings were very 
widely extended — European so far as the middle classes 
were concerned, Teutonic at least, in the case of the 
lower classes who suffered the most severely from the 
abuses complained of, and had the least opportunity for 
redress. These feelings constituted an indispensable 
preparation for the Reformation, but other conditions 
were equally necessary to its complete success. 

The revolution which had been wrought in the intel- 
lectual world in the century between Huss and Luther 
was one of the indispensable conditions. At the death 
of Huss the West had only just begun the study of Greek. 
Since that date, the great body of classical literature had 
been recovered, and the sciences of philological and his- 
torical criticism thoroughly established. As a result, 
Luther had at his command a well-developed method 
and an apparatus of exegesis and research impossible to 
any earlier reformer, and without these his translation 
of the Bible, and the arguments of all the early Protes- 
tants, so largely historical in character, would have been 
wanting in many things. But also the world had be- 
come familiar with independent investigation, and with 



414 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the proclamation of new views and the upsetting of old 
ones. By no means the least of the great services of 
Erasmus to civilization had been to hold up before all 
the world so conspicuous an example of the scholar fol- 
lowing, as his inalienable right, the truth as he found it 
wherever it appeared to lead him, and honest in his pub- 
lic utterances to the results of his studies. He did not 
convince all the world of his right. But his was the 
crowning work of a century which had produced in the gen- 
eral public a greatly changed attitude of mind towards 
intellectual independence since the days of Huss. The 
printing-press was of itself almost enough to account for 
Luther's success as compared with his predecessors. 
WyclifTe made almost as direct and vigorous an appeal 
to the public at large, and "with an amazing industry he 
issued tract after tract in the tongue of the people"; but 
Luther had a great advantage in the rapid multiplication 
of copies and in their cheapness, and he covered Europe 
with the issues of his press. The discovery of America, 
the finding of a sea route to India and the beginning of 
a world-commerce, the opening of another world of ex- 
periences in the recovered knowledge of history and of 
literature, the great inventions, a revived rapidity of 
intercourse throughout Europe, and a new sense of com- 
munity interests, indeed, all the results of the fifteenth 
century that can be mentioned had combined to create 
a new spirit and a new atmosphere. Luther spoke to a 
very different public from that which Wycliffe or Huss 
had addressed — a public European in extent, and one not 
merely familiar with the assertion of new ideas but tol- 
erant, in a certain way, of the innovator, and expectant 
of great things in the future. 

The political situation in Europe also, at the time of 
Luther, was, to all appearance at least, an essential con- 
dition of the ultimate success of the Reformation. The 
large possessions brought together through the fortunate 



THE REFORMATION 415 

marriages of the Hapsburgs had been united with those 
which the diplomatic skill of Ferdinand the Catholic had 
acquired. The "civil arm," as represented by the Em- 
peror Charles V, would seem to have been strong enough 
to deal unhesitatingly with any unwelcome religious opin- 
ion which might arise. But Charles never found a mo- 
ment when he could exert this strength against Protes- 
tantism, until it was too late. On the west was the rival 
power of France, less in extent and apparent resources, 
but not scattered like his own power, closely concen- 
trated in the hands of the brilliant and ambitious Fran- 
cis I. On the east was the equally dangerous Turkish 
empire, still at the height of its strength, and determined 
to push its conquests farther up the Danube valley. 
Three times after the Diet of Worms, where Luther was 
originally condemned, when Charles seemed free to use 
his whole power for the extermination of heresy, follow- 
ing no doubt his personal inclination as well as what he 
judged to be his political interests — in 1526, in 1529, and 
again in 1530 — was he forced, each time by some sud- 
den turn in the affairs of Europe, some new combination 
against him, sometimes with the pope among his enemies, 
to grant a momentary toleration. In 1532 was concluded 
the definite Peace of Nuremberg, the price of Protestant 
assistance against the Turks, by which a formal agree- 
ment was made to allow matters to remain as they were 
until the meeting of a general council. Under this ar- 
rangement Protestantism gained so much strength that 
when, in 1547, the emperor at last found himself able to 
attack its adherents, he could not entirely subdue them, 
although he nearly succeeded. 

Such, then, was the long and general preparation for 
the Reformation — religious, intellectual, and political. 
So deep was the current setting in this direction that 
nothing could have held it back. Lefevre and Zwingli 
and Luther, beginning at the same time in three different 



416 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

countries, and entirely independent of one another, the 
same work, show clearly how inevitable the movement 
was. We associate the beginning of the Reformation es- 
pecially with the name of Luther, and correctly so. His 
attack was directed so squarely at the central point of 
the papal defences; he began it in so conspicuous a way, 
and upon a question of such general interest; it was con- 
nected, also, so directly with the empire; and the prepara- 
tion for it extended so far down among the people to whom 
he immediately appealed, that it attracted at once uni- 
versal attention, and became the forefront of the whole 
European movement. But it is as certain as any un- 
enacted history can be that this was an irrepressible 
revolution. If Luther had been weak, or if he had been 
a coward, some other leader would have taken the com- 
mand, and the Reformation would have occurred in the 
same age, and with the same general characteristics. It 
is not possible to understand this great movement if this 
inevitable character is not appreciated. It must be rec- 
ognized as being, like the French Revolution, the burst- 
ing forth of the deeper forces of history, through the 
obstacles that confined them, sweeping a clear road for a 
new advance. 

Luther did not create the Reformation. He was the 
popular leader who translated into the terms of common 
life, into direct and passionate words that came close 
home to men of every rank, the principles of religious, 
ecclesiastical, and intellectual reform, which had been 
proclaimed before him in more remote ways, and turned 
into great historic forces the influences which had been 
slowly engendered in the world of scholars and thinkers. 
He was, though independent himself, the popularizer of 
other men's labors. 

But the Reformation, as it really occurred, was largely 
his work. His powerful personality impressed itself upon 



THE REFORMATION 417 

the whole movement. He gave it form and direction, 
and personal traits of his became characteristics of it, 
not so much, perhaps, because they were his personal 
traits, as because they were an expression in the individ- 
ual of the tendencies of the age. Of these characteristics 
there are four which are noteworthy, as especially general 
and lasting. 

In the first place, as the starting-point of all, Luther 
was one of those not infrequent men, usually men of great 
moral force and power, who are perpetually driven by a 
sense of personal guilt and sin, unfelt by the general run 
of men, and by a compelling necessity, to find in some 
way a counterbalancing sense of reconciliation with God. 
This feeling it was which led him into the monastery 
against so many influences to keep him out. But he did 
not free himself from it by this step. He speedily found 
the insufficiency of the best means at the disposal of the 
cloister, of worship and holy works, of penance, and pri- 
vate prayer, and spiritual meditation, to meet the need 
which he felt. 

This was because of another characteristic of Luther's 
mind, as deep and impelling as his sense of sin. It would 
be absurd to deny that monasticism has furnished a 
complete and final spiritual refuge to thousands of pi- 
ous souls in every age. But they have been, as a rule, of 
the contemplative and unquestioning kind. This Luther 
certainly was not. His intellectual nature was as active 
as his moral. The demand for a philosophical theory of 
the process by which reconciliation with God takes place, 
which should be satisfactory to his intellect, was as im- 
perative as the demand for the reconciliation itself, and 
the one was not possible for him without the other. 

The strong theological or philosophical bent of Luther's 
mind, this demand for an intellectual explanation before 
the soul could be at rest, is one of the vital points at the 
beginning of the Reformation, and one of the dominating 



418 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

characteristics of Protestantism so long as the direct in- 
fluence of the Reformation age lasted. It was the union 
in Luther's mind of these two elements — the keen sense 
of guilt and the demand for a reasonable theory of the 
means of relief — that led him to the first, and wholly un- 
conscious step in his revolt against the prevailing church 
system. Had either existed alone he might have been 
satisfied with things as they were. But when, under the 
heavy spiritual burden which he felt, he turned, with his 
power of sharp analysis, to the accepted doctrine of the 
efficacy of works, of acquired merit, it failed to satisfy 
his reason, although he tested it in the genuine ascetic 
spirit. It seemed absurd to him that anything which he 
might do should have any bearing upon the removal of 
his guilt in the sight of God. If a sense of forgiveness in 
which he could rest was to be found, he must obtain from 
some source an explanation of the method of salvation 
which should differ from the prevailing one in placing less 
emphasis upon the action of the individual and more 
upon the divine agency. 

Luther seems to have worked himself out from this 
state of doubt and difficulty through long and heavy ex- 
perience, and with the aid of slight suggestions received 
from various sources, from Staupitz, the Vicar of his 
Order, from the writings of St. Bernard and of Gerson, 
and, perhaps, from men less known to history. He had 
been from the beginning of his life as a monk a most 
earnest student of the Bible, as prescribed by the rules 
of his Order, but he does not seem to have found any 
satisfactory answer to his needs in the Bible until the 
suggestion which served as a guide to him in his search 
had reached him from some outside source or from his 
own experience. When he had obtained from such 
sources the suggestion of justification by faith, of salva- 
tion as the free gift of God, of forgiveness of sins as the 
direct result of the redemption made by Christ, accepted 



THE REFORMATION 419 

by the immediate faith of the sinner, he found this idea 
abundantly supported in the Scriptures, and easily 
wrought into a logical and systematic theory under the 
influence of St. Augustine and St. Paul as he interpreted 
them. Luther had read St. Augustine to some extent 
before he had hit upon the idea of justification by faith, 
but it was from the standpoint of the later scholastic 
theology, which had no sympathy with the main current 
of St. Augustine's thought, and he had been blind to his 
meaning. Now, however, he had found the key, and 
under the influence of his new reading of St. Augustine, 
the theoretical side of his belief grew rapidly into system- 
atic form, though to a form slightly different from that 
of his teacher, and he found his confidence that he had dis- 
covered the truth greatly strengthened. So thoroughly 
in sympathy did he become with the ideas of the great 
theologian of the West that he was able to detect the spu- 
riousness of a work on penances, which had long passed 
under St. Augustine's name, because it was out of har- 
mony with his system of thought. 

This result, the formation of a clearer theory of justi- 
fication by faith as the confident and satisfactory answer 
to the need of personal reconciliation with God which he 
felt, was the first step in the Reformation, the great step 
of the preparation of the leader to take command of the 
movement when the crisis should arise which would de- 
mand a leader. These results Luther did not reach until 
after he had been transferred to the University of Wit- 
tenberg, but they were in definite shape and part of his 
university teaching before his attention had been called 
in any especial way to their bearing upon the current 
doctrine of indulgences. 

When Luther had once reached these conclusions he 
held them and defended them with the spirit and the 
methods of the genuine humanist. He attacked with 
vigor Aristotle and the schoolmen. He appealed to the 



420 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

original Christianity and to its early documents as the 
only valid evidence, and he handled these documents in 
a critical spirit. He called in the evidence of history 
against the papal pretensions, and he accepted for him- 
self without hesitation the results which his new position 
logically involved in opposition to the reigning theories 
of the church, the results, that is, of individual inde- 
pendence and of the right of private judgment, even so 
far as to a complete break with the church. Erasmus 
himself was scarcely more a child of the Renaissance in 
spirit and in methods than Luther. This is the third of 
the characteristics of Luther's work which were of wide 
and permanent influence in the larger movement. If the 
great principles which are seen and stated by the think- 
ers ever give a fresh impulse to the world, and turn the 
currents of history in new directions, it is because they are 
taken possession of by some popular leader and trans- 
formed from the abstract into the concrete, identified with 
some great interest of life held dear by the masses of men. 
This Luther did for the principle of free thought. It 
had been asserted long before him in the world of schol- 
ars, but Luther now associated it forever with one of the 
dearest interests of the race, its religious aspirations, so 
that in the future for every Bruno who might be found 
ready to die for the philosopher's freedom of thought, a 
thousand simple men would gladly embrace the stake for 
the liberty to believe in God as they understood him, 
against whatever authority, and the right of free thought 
was henceforth in theory at least counted among the 
most sacred rights of the individual. 1 

But it must be admitted — so far as the evidence allows 

1 It must not be understood that what is here said means that Protes- 
tantism, or any Protestant sect, with some rare and imperfect exceptions 
like the Independents of England, for a long time to come recognized the 
right of free thought for any but itself. The appeal to the right of private 
judgment within Protestantism was for many generations the appeal of the 
rebel against authority as truly as in the case of Luther. What is meant 



THE REFORMATION 42 1 

us to Judge, and it seems to be conclusive — that Luther 
did not reach the theological position which necessitated 
his rebellion against the church and his assertion of the 
right of free thought, as a result of the influence of the 
Renaissance upon him, nor by the use of the humanistic 
methods of study. On the contrary, it seems that he was 
led to adopt the principles of the Renaissance because 
that result was involved in his determination to maintain 
the theological conclusions which he had reached. It 
was along the medieval road that Luther had advanced 
— the study of the schoolmen, dependence upon specula- 
tion and authority, the use of the Bible as a theological 
text-book — and the result which he reached was merely 
the putting of one theological system in place of another. 
Careful researches appear to make it certain that, even in 
his student days, in the university of Erfurt, and before 
his entry into the cloister, Luther did not come under the 
direct influence of Humanism to any such extent as was 
formerly supposed. It may have been that its results 
and its spirit were in the air, and were absorbed by Luther 
unconsciously; but it is far more likely that he arrived at 
its fundamental position from another side, as the Wal- 
denses and WyclirTe and Huss had done, before the Re- 
naissance began, and found himself in harmony with the 
principle of free inquiry and free opinion, because that 
principle, in face of the dominant theocracy, seemed the 
unavoidable corollary of his answer to the question, 
which was for all the reformers, early and late, a purely 
religious question: What is the means of union between 
God and man revealed to us in Christianity, and what 
does it require of us? 

is that logically Protestantism rested upon this basis; that this principle 
must be continually asserting itself in the Protestant world in the multi- 
plication of sects all virtually appealing to it; and that, however intolerant 
the individual man or sect might be in asserting the position of exclusive 
truth, practically except where government interfered the right of rebellion 
had to be recognized. 



422 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

This fact does not make Luther's indebtedness to the 
Renaissance any the less. The position of opposition to 
old beliefs which Luther's conclusions forced him to take 
was one with which the world was now familiar, thanks 
to that movement, and the emancipated judgment and 
conscience of thousands in every land were ready to fol- 
low him, or, if circumstances rendered it impossible for 
some to follow, at least to sympathize fully with the stand 
he had taken and with his aims. And we have indicated 
the aid which he received in other ways from the results 
of the revival of learning. But many things in the char- 
acter of the Reformation and of early Protestantism will 
remain difficult to understand, unless it be remembered 
that if Luther was a child of the Renaissance, as has been 
said, he was an adopted child. He was not by nature 
the heir of its spirit, nor of all its tendencies. He ac- 
cepted its principles and its methods because they were 
necessary to him, not because he had been formed under 
their influence, and must therefore give them expression 
in his action. And he never adopted them completely 
nor in all their logical results. He asserted for himself 
the right of free thought. But when the same principle 
began to be applied against his doctrines by the numer- 
ous sects which sprang up as one of the first and natural 
results of the Reformation, he did not recognize their 
right with equal clearness. The belief which the early 
Protestant shared with the Catholic in the vital impor- 
tance of theological opinion, made it easy for him to adopt 
the fundamental principle of all intolerance that freedom 
of thought means only the freedom of the conscience to 
hold the truth, and therefore as the system which he held 
contained the truth, no opposing doctrine could have any 
rights. As thoroughly characteristic of Luther as any 
of the three traits which have been mentioned — his spir- 
itual sense, his philosophical tendency, and his human- 
istic spirit — was this fourth trait also of intellectual nar- 



THE REFORMATION 423 

rowness, that is, the fact that he remained to the end of his 
life, upon one side of his nature, a medieval monk. That 
this was in complete contradiction with his own funda- 
mental position, and with the methods by which he de- 
fended himself, gave him no uneasiness. He had not the 
slightest consciousness of self-contradiction, nor had any 
of the early Protestants, who were like him in this regard. 
So intense was their interest in the theological theories 
which seemed to them to contain the whole truth that 
their eyes were closed to all else, and it was only here and 
there during the first two hundred years after the Ref- 
ormation that official Protestantism really escaped from 
the medieval point of view and became true to itself in 
its attitude towards dissenting thought. 

By a medieval method Luther had reached a result 
which was mainly intellectual, that is theological, in 
character, and which was to bring him, in some of the 
most decisive consequences of his work, into harmony 
with the great intellectual movement of the end of the 
middle ages. But the strong impelling force in Luther's 
development, it must be remembered, that which had 
started him in this direction and which carried him on 
irresistibly to the conclusions he had reached, was the 
spiritual necessity of personal reconciliation with God, 1 
a religious need so deeply felt that its satisfaction involved 
as matters of secondary import all the rest, rebellion 
against the old church with its infallible authority, the 
adoption of all the current popular demands of religious 
and ecclesiastical reform, as closely related ends, and of 
the principles established by the Renaissance as indis- 

1 The clearly intellectual element so prominent in the Reformation and 
the identification which the reformers themselves so strenuously made of 
theology, that is, a great intellectual interest, with religion should not lead 
us to overlook the fact, as they have some recent writers, that the Reforma- 
tion was primarily, in origin, purpose, and result, a religious movement. It 
is quite impossible to explain it fully by a study of its intellectual antece- 
dents alone. 



424 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

pensable allies. And now it must be noticed that this 
religious element in Luther's character was also the mov- 
ing force in his next step, in the first public act of his 
which opened the Reformation. 

Not very long after Luther had reached the results in 
which he rested, and after he had begun to teach them 
in his lectures on the Bible, Tetzel came into the neigh- 
borhood of Wittenberg preaching a peculiarly crude and 
debasing theory of the efficacy of indulgences for the 
forgiveness of sins — there can be no doubt of this, how- 
ever much Tetzel may have modified the worst crudities 
when he came to put his words into print — and attract- 
ing much attention among the people. Luther was in- 
stantly aroused. He had already preached against the 
popular trust in indulgences, but now something further 
was demanded and the ninety-five theses were posted. 
In this act Luther was following a common university 
custom. The theses were propositions which he proposed 
to defend in set debate against all comers. They stated 
the beliefs on the subject which Luther had reached, but 
they also contained some things of which he was not 
entirely sure, and some things whose full bearing he did 
not see. They were stated in scholastic form, and not 
intended for the general circulation which they received. 

It is certain that the moving purpose in this step of 
Luther's was religious rather than theological. The form 
was theological, but what he had most nearly at heart 
was the practical object. It was to save men from a 
fatal delusion, from trust in a false and destroying method 
of salvation, and to bring them back to the true Christian 
faith as he saw it that he attacked the popular ideas. All 
the other things which followed as later consequences of 
this action were unintended and unforeseen by him. In 
regard to some of them, if he had seen that he was likely 
to be led on to them, he would undoubtedly, feeling as 
he then did, have hesitated long before taking the first 



THE REFORMATION 425 

step. He believed that he was defending the theology 
of the church against ideas which had become prevalent 
but which were nevertheless abuses. The seventy-first 
of his theses pronounces a woe upon those who speak 
against the truth of apostolic indulgences, and the seventy- 
second a blessing upon those who object to the loose words 
of the preachers of indulgences. But the leading motive 
of his action was not his wish to put the true theology in 
place of the false as a matter of science, it was his zeal 
for the souls of men, lost, as he believed, through a mis- 
taken belief. 

The effect of the publication of the theses was a sur- 
prise to Luther. In two weeks, he says, they had gone 
through all Germany. In four weeks, says a contempo- 
rary, they had gone through all Christendom as if the 
angels themselves had been the messengers. 1 Luther 
had intended to influence opinion in Wittenberg and 
vicinity, scarcely at all beyond, but the effect was univer- 
sal, so deep was the preparation for them which no one 
had suspected. Instinctively, as it were, the public rec- 
ognized the declaration of war, more clearly than the 
leader himself, and instantly the hosts began to gather 
and to draw up against one another. The next two years 
was a period of rapid development in Luther's under- 
standing of his real position towards the old church, and 
of what he would be obliged to do if he was resolved to 
maintain that position. It was because he had reached 
his conclusions by the pathway of inner experience that he 
was so slow to realize all that they meant, but the logic of 
the events which followed the publication of the theses 
was sharp and clear. 

The first result was to bring Luther to see that some 

points which he had stated were in reality opposed to 

the accepted church theology, and not in harmony with 

it, as he had thought. He was also made to realize that 

1 Koestlin, Martin Luther, vol. I, p. 172. 



426 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the question of the relation of the pope to the church was 
necessarily involved. This was the weak spot in Luther's 
case, and was especially selected by his opponents for 
attack. It had been far from his intention to raise the 
question, but he did not shrink from it when it was 
pressed upon him. It was in this direction, indeed, and 
not so much in any other, that further growth was nec- 
essary for him. He began believing in the infallibility 
of the church certainly, if not in that of the pope, and 
in the duty of the individual to submit his judgment to 
the judgment of the church. But the attacks which 
were made upon him during these two years forced him 
to other views. Step by step he was led on from his as- 
sertion to Cardinal Cajetan that the declaration of the 
pope was to be regarded as the voice of God only when it 
was in conformity with the Bible, and his statement in 
writing that a general council of the church might err, to 
the final position of complete rebellion, into which he 
was forced by the skill of Dr. Eck in the great debate in 
Leipsic, in 15 19, that the church universal might be in 
error in some formally adopted declaration, and was so 
regarding Huss. Henceforth his position in regard to 
the old church was logically complete. He must make 
war upon it, and establish an independent church if he 
could, or he must submit and be burned as a heretic. 
The burning of the pope's bull, in December, 1520, was 
only an especially public and dramatic repetition of dec- 
larations already clearly made. 

The primary meaning of the Reformation is religious. 
It was a religious motive from which the reformers acted, 
and a religious result which they sought as their supreme 
object. In this direction what they consciously attempted, 
was to return to a more simple and truer Christianity 
from the additions and corruptions which the middle ages 
had introduced. And in many and essential respects, the 



THE REFORMATION 427 

Reformation did make such a return. In ceremonies and 
in forms of government the Protestant of any name is 
undoubtedly nearer to the original Christianity than the 
Catholic. In the matter of the abuses and oppressions of 
which Europe complained so bitterly just before the 
Reformation, not merely was a great change worked in 
Protestant lands, but also in the Catholic church itself. 
The work of Luther forced a reformation which was, in the 
most important particulars, thorough and complete. It 
is true that such a reform would have been made in the 
Catholic church in time without Luther, but the attack 
which he led forced a more speedy and perhaps a more 
decided change than would otherwise have taken place. 
In administration and in morals the Catholic church has 
been, since the middle of the sixteenth century, a reformed 
church. 

In regard to the more directly religious question which 
the reformers had especially at heart, the question of the 
reconciliation of the sinner with God, it can hardly be 
denied that the Reformation was, also, a return to a 
more primitive and truer Christianity. Divested of 
technical statement the work of the Reformation in this 
respect was to emphasize the immediate personal rela- 
tion between God and man, and to bring into practical 
consciousness far more clearly than had been done under 
the old system the fact that individual faith in Christ as 
the Saviour is the centre and source of the religious life. 1 
Undoubtedly this fact had been realized by thousands of 
saintly men in the medieval centuries, undoubtedly, also, 
the religiously cultivated soul may realize it as truly in 
the Roman as in any church, but it is also equally certain 

1 Dr. Philip Schaff says: " Schleiermacher reduced the whole difference 
between Romanism and Protestantism to the formula, 'Romanism makes 
the relation of the individual to Christ depend on his relation to the church; 
Protestantism, vice versa, makes the relation of the individual to the church 
depend on his relation to Christ.'" — Pamphlet, Luther Symposiac, Union 
Seminary, 1883. 



428 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

that the Protestant church keeps this fact much more 
clearly and distinctly before the mass of men than does 
the Catholic, and makes its full realization easier for 
them. The crude abuses of the Catholic teaching which 
led to the first public protest of Luther have been com- 
paratively rare since that time. But it is a fact of easy 
observation that the doctrine of that church upon this 
point is often misunderstood by the more ignorant, and, 
when misunderstood, lends itself as readily to-day as in 
the days of Tetzel to debasing beliefs and to practices that 
are essentially pagan. 1 

If, however, the main object which the reformers 
sought was religious their way of looking at it was theo- 
logical, was under the form of a doctrine rather than of 
a principle of life. The improved doctrinal statement 
seemed to them the greatest improvement made. It was 
the right to hold this for which they contended. It was 
the impossibility of holding it in the old church which 
had forced them to withdraw from it and to form an 
independent church. Indeed, the whole religious life 
seemed to them so completely controlled and condi- 
tioned by the theological opinion that they were dis- 
posed to deny the possibility of its existence under any 
form of doctrine different from their own, and that which 
sustained alike the Protestant and the Catholic martyr 
of this time in his sufferings was not merely the religious 
life which was alike in both — no Protestant can doubt 
this who studies the life of Sir Thomas More — but it 
was his earnest conviction that the religious life of which 
he was conscious was inseparably bound up with the in- 
tellectual system which he held and his supreme devotion 
to that system and to his rights as he conceived them in 
an age of bitter conflict of opinion. 

1 See, for example, the Booh of the Scapular and the beliefs associated with 
the wearing of that article among ignorant Catholics, undoubtedly without 
the real sanction of the church. 



THE REFORMATION 429 

This prevailingly theological character of early Prot- 
estantism has already been emphasized. But certain 
consequences of it in modern times and to-day should be 
noticed. In the first place, it made the more zealous 
Protestants, and especially those who were under an 
official responsibility for the safety of their faith, as intol- 
erant of opposing, or, as they thought, dangerous, opinions 
as the Catholic, and for the same reason, the supposed 
vital necessity of a correct theology. 1 In most cases state 
churches as rigidly organized and as devotedly supported 
by the laws, took the place of the old ecclesiastical sys- 
tem. The roll of Protestant martyrs made by Protestant 
bigotry is not a short nor an inglorious one, and new 
theories in the sciences had always bitter opposition to 
meet from Protestant theologians. Only slowly, and aided 
largely by commercial considerations, was full toleration 
established as the rule, but it has been reserved to the 
present age, with a few glorious exceptions, and to a 
growing understanding of the true position which theo- 
logical opinion holds in religion, to bring Protestantism 
to a consciousness of its own logical position, and to se- 

1 The following passage, quoted in Hausser's Period of the Reformation, 
p. 520 (Am. ed.), from Hohenegg, Lutheran court theologian of Saxony dur- 
ing the Thirty Years' War, is an interesting example: "For it is as plain as 
that the sun shines at midday, that the Calvinistic doctrine is full of fright- 
ful blasphemy, horrible error and mischief, and is diametrically opposed to 
God's holy revealed word. To take up arms for the Calvinists is nothing 
else than to serve under the originator of Calvinism — the Devil. We ought, 
indeed, to give our lives for our brethren; but the Calvinists are not our 
brethren in Christ; to support them would be to offer ourselves and our 
children to Moloch. We ought to love our enemies, but the Calvinists are 
not our enemies but God's." 

John Cotton, in his argument with Roger Williams on persecution, rep- 
resents, I suppose, fairly the position of most of the early Protestants. He 
says: "I doe not thinke it lawfull to excommunicate an Heretick, much lesse 
to persecute him with the civill Sword, till it may appeare, even by just 
and full conviction, that he sinneth not out of conscience, but against the 
very light of his own conscience." — Narraganset Club Publications, vol. II, 
p. 61. That Cotton's position was exactly that of the Roman church Wil- 
liams was not slow to point out. See Ibid., vol. IV, p. 57. 



430 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

cure complete religious liberty in Protestant states, though 
evidently not as yet with the universal extinction of the 
old feelings. 

In the second place, the strong intellectual tendency in 
Protestantism pushed the sermon to the front as a more 
prominent portion of the church service than it had been. 
The Catholic was and is more a religion of worship, less 
a religion of individual thought and conviction. Protes- 
tantism implies more intellectual activity among the lay 
membership and an interest on their part in the problems 
of theology. When there was, in truth, such an interest 
in the community at large in theological discussion, often 
the most intense interest of the time, there could hardly 
be too many or too long sermons. But it is clear that a 
popular interest of the old kind in such discussions does 
not exist to-day. It would not be possible for any body 
of average Protestants of the present time to " beguile the 
weariness" of a long sea- voyage with three sermons a 
day, of the Puritan sort, as is recorded of the passengers 
of the Griffin, on their way to the Massachusetts colony 
in 1633. From this fact arises one of the practical prob- 
lems which the Protestant churches are discussing — how 
to increase the interest in the sermon — and this explains 
also one of the elements of attraction which many, trained 
under the more rigid Protestant services, find in forms of 
service which have retained more of the element of wor- 
ship, or even for the forms of the Roman church itself. 

The result of the Reformation in the direction of intel- 
lectual freedom is now evident. It planted itself squarely 
on the principles enunciated by the Revival of Learning, 1 

1 The protest of the German princes and cities against the action of the 
Diet, in 1529, from which the name Protestant comes, grounds itself on the 
principle that the majority has no right to bind the conscience of the mi- 
nority. 

It is at this point, also, that the greatest barrier still exists between the 
Roman and the Protestant forms of Christianity. It may be as difficult 
now for the Roman church to modify its official theology as it was in the 



THE REFORMATION 43 1 

but those who led the movement did not do so from 
choice, and their support of liberty of thought was never 
more than half-hearted. But they could not control the 
consequences of their action. The general result was an 
atmosphere of intellectual independence and inquiry in 
all Protestant countries, seen in the rapid multiplication 
of religious sects, which could not be checked, and in the 
history of philosophy, science, and the book-trade. The 
intellectual history of the world since the Reformation is 
the history of the growing prevalence of this spirit in 
Protestant countries and of its introduction into countries 
in which the Roman church prevailed, as the result of the 
sceptical philosophy of the eighteenth century and of the 
French Revolution. 

There should be added to complete the statement of 
the influence of the Reformation the more detailed results 
which are often referred to but cannot be here treated at 
length. Such is its influence on the study of the Bible 
by people of all classes, a result especially marked in 
Anglo-Saxon countries, and not without its influence on 
Roman Catholic policy; its influence on public schools of 
the lower grades; on the fixing of the literary forms of 

days of Luther, but to the most intelligent Protestants of to-day, undoubt- 
edly, the theological difference seems a less vital difference than to the 
early reformers. But no intelligent Protestant can ever surrender his right 
to hold that theological opinion which seems to him, individually, the most 
reasonable. It is equally impossible for the Roman church to surrender its 
fundamental position that a correct theological belief is a necessity of the 
Christian faith, and that the church is able, under especial divine guidance, 
to determine which of two varying theological opinions is the only correct 
one, and has the right to require all men to believe this alone if they would 
be counted Christians. Authorities of the Roman church may say much 
upon their sympathy with free thought, but their definition of free thought 
must always remain different from that which prevails in the Protestant 
world. The qualification is always expressed or implied that freedom is not 
license, and that true freedom consists in submission to legitimate author- 
ity — terms, again, which must be interpreted from the Roman point of view. 
That church can never abandon its claim to determine what particular 
thought it is which shall be free, without abandoning the one most essential 
thing which distinguishes it from the Protestant. 



432 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

national languages; and on the use of the printing-press 
to influence public opinion. 

The Reformation, as was implied at the beginning of 
the chapter, completes the history of the middle ages. 
The church was the institution which had tarried farthest 
behind in the progress of the later centuries, and the 
Reformation was the revolution by which, for a large 
part of the church, the medieval was transformed into 
the modern. In matters directly religious, to escape from 
the medieval was the object most earnestly sought by the 
reformers. In other respects the transformation took 
place against their will and without their knowledge, but 
it took place. For a portion of the church, however, this 
was not the case. That part of it which remained faith- 
ful to Rome did, indeed, in some points share the change, 
notably in the matter of moral and ecclesiastical abuses, 
but in its chief theories and its distinguishing doctrines 
the Roman church remained medieval. Its theory of 
continued inspiration and continued miracles; its belief 
in the infallibility of the church or of the pope, as built 
upon that theory; its doctrines of transubstantiation and 
of supererogatory merit, are all medieval, based upon 
mental conceptions and habits of thought which are for- 
eign to the mind of to-day. 

In general, also, the Reformation must not be judged, 
as seems now and then to be the tendency, to be some- 
thing final. It was but one phase in a constant process, 
gaining a peculiar importance because of its violent and 
revolutionary character due to the fact that the process 
had not been permitted to go on naturally. If it is allow- 
able to judge our own age, its great work, religiously and 
intellectually, has been to carry a long step farther the 
principles which the Reformation incompletely realized. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

SUMMARY 

We have now followed the course of European civili- 
zation from the time when the various streams which 
united to form it were drawing together at the close of 
ancient history, until all its various elements were com- 
pletely united and had begun the more rapid advance 
which we term modern history. It is clearly a period of 
preparation, not in the sense, however, in which every 
age in history is a preparation for the following age. It 
was not so much, as now, a preparation in institutions, 
discoveries, and ideas, though there was something of 
this. It was rather a preparation of men. It is a period 
of history in which the races that have created modern 
civilization were brought together and united in the or- 
ganic system which we call Christendom, in which the 
ideas and institutions which each contributed were also 
united into a common whole, and in which men were 
prepared to add to the results of distinctly medieval 
times, not slight in some directions, the higher products 
of ancient civilization which they had been unable to 
comprehend until near the close of the period. With 
this preparation completed, and this final union made, 
the modern spirit entered into history, and made itself 
master, in succession, of the various departments of civ- 
ilization. 

The two fundamental facts in this process of union are 
the Roman Empire and the Christian church. The first 
in the order of time was the Roman Empire. It united 

433 



434 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the ancient world into a common whole, which was in all 
essential respects as organic a union as modern Chris- 
tendom. The two great classical civilizations — the Greek, 
of art and literature and science and philosophy; the 
Roman, of law and government and practical skill — were 
blended into a world civilization in which the best ele- 
ments of various tribal civilizations became the property 
of all men. This common whole which Rome created 
was never afterwards destroyed. The keen sense of it, 
the cosmopolitan feeling which was characteristic of the 
best days of the empire, declined. Europe threatened 
at times to break into fragments, but such a result never 
happened. The old force which had at first maintained 
the union — the idea of Rome — grew weaker and disap- 
peared, but not until a new one — the church — had arisen 
to take its place. Christendom is the creation of this 
new force upon the foundation which the Roman Empire 
had laid. 

Into this empire, in its earliest age, before the decay 
had been detected which had already begun, entered 
Christianity, spreading slowly at first, then more rapidly 
and among higher classes. Before its third century was 
completed it had become the recognized religion of the 
imperial court. In the age of its more rapid expansion 
it absorbed not only the pagan society but also pagan 
ideas, and became less spiritual and more formal. Cere- 
monies and doctrinal beliefs multiplied. The simple or- 
ganization of primitive days gave place to a complicated 
but strong hierarchy, over which the bishop of Rome 
had already begun to assert his headship and to secure, 
in a part of the church, its recognition. This strong 
organization arose, creating a real unity throughout the 
provinces of the West, at the moment when they were 
falling apart politically. When they had become wholly 
independent kingdoms it remained a living bond of union 
between them. 



SUMMARY 435 

Before this point was reached the fatal weakness of 
the Roman Empire had become evident. The occupa- 
tion of the world by the Romans had exhausted their 
strength. There had been no opportunity under the 
empire to root out the moral and economic evils which 
had begun their existence in the last days of the repub- 
lic, nor to recover the losses which they continually in- 
flicted. Beyond the frontier, in every generation, a 
watchful enemy made trial of the Roman strength, and 
at last found it insufficient. In the fifth century every 
province of the West was taken possession of by the 
Germans, and the fourth great source of the elements 
which were to be combined in medieval times was brought 
into connection with the other three. Teutonic king- 
doms were founded, Ostrogothic in Italy, Visigothic in 
Spain, Vandal in Africa, Burgundian in the Rhone valley, 
Saxon in England, Frankish in Gaul, and finally, Lombard 
in North Italy, but in the end they were all overthrown 
except the Frankish and the Saxon. These were the two 
peoples destined in the end to be the especially active 
agents in the transmission of institutions and law through 
the middle ages. 

The apparent result of the Teutonic settlement was 
ruinous to civilization. Disorder, ignorance, and super- 
stition, which were already beginning, were intensified 
by the conquest. But the ruin was more in appearance 
than in reality. Even before the invasion most of the 
German tribes were prepared to respect many things 
which they found among the Romans, and almost imme- 
diately the two influences which were the chief agents in 
their absorption, the Christian church and the idea of 
Rome, began to work upon them. The process of union 
and recovery was slow, necessarily slow, because of the 
weakness of the recuperative influences, and of the rough- 
ness of the material upon which they acted. For three 
centuries history is filled with the shifting of peoples and 



436 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

the rise and fall of states, with no apparent gain of sta- 
bility or security, the first requisites of progress. The 
first great advance which gave promise of better things 
was the empire of Charlemagne at the beginning of the 
ninth century. 

The first Carolingians had restored the strength of the 
Frankish state, and recovered the lands conquered by the 
early Merovingians. On this foundation Charlemagne 
erected an empire rivalling in extent the Western Roman 
Empire. But his revival of the title of Emperor in the 
West was not alone justified by the extent of the terri- 
tory over which he ruled. All things for which the name 
of Rome stood, in the minds of those who still remem- 
bered it, were represented in that day by the Frankish 
empire. Order and security, general legislation, a com- 
mon government for many different peoples, the fostering 
of schools and religion, a promise of permanence for the 
future, all these were connected with the name of Charle- 
magne, and we may add the fact — of which they were 
less conscious — the speedy union into a single people of 
the two races, the conquerors and the conquered. His 
empire was not permanent. The causes of disorder were 
still too strong to be overcome, and the effort to estab- 
lish governments of the old Roman or of the modern type 
was premature. But Charlemagne's attempt was a strong 
reinforcement of the better forces. It created for a mo- 
ment security and a real union. It revived the influence 
of Rome. As men looked back upon it from a later time, 
it became a new golden age. From the time of Charle- 
magne progress was still slow, but Europe assumed a more 
settled character and never quite fell back into the ear- 
lier confusion. 

The most prominent general feature of political civili- 
zation characteristic of modern times as compared with 
ancient, is the existence of independent nations, constitut- 
ing a virtual federation in the place of one great empire. 



SUMMARY 437 

The creation of these nations was the work of the last 
half of the middle ages, but in the breaking up of Charle- 
magne's empire they made their first appearance. In 
other words, the failure of the attempt to secure settled 
political order by a revival of the one great empire plan, 
was accompanied with an attempt to secure it by the 
modern system of national governments. The West 
Franks and the Eastern German tribes fell apart, and set 
up governments of their own, distinguished both from 
each other and from the Carolingian. England emerged 
from the age of tribal kingdoms, and began a national 
life under the lead of the West Saxons. But these prom- 
ises of national organizations really able to govern were 
not immediately fulfilled. There were as yet, even within 
these narrower geographical limits, too few of the ele- 
ments of a common life from which states draw their sup- 
port to render these attempts successful. In England the 
Danish invasions threw the nation back into something 
like the conditions of the first age of conquest. In Ger- 
many the national government was the most promising 
of any until the Norman dynasty gained possession of 
England, but even in Germany it was weakened by strong 
tribal differences, which were not entirely overcome when 
it entered upon the long conflict with the papacy, entailed 
upon it by the Holy Roman Empire. In France the feu- 
dal system had its origin, and it had usurped the powers 
of the general government, even before the fall of the 
Carolingian family. The feudal king whom it set on the 
throne in the place of the old dynasty had only a name to 
reign, and the same result happened wherever in Europe 
the feudal system became powerful. Yet for France and 
for all Europe the feudal system was of the greatest service 
in an age when anarchy could not be entirely repressed, 
because it carefully preserved the form and theory of a 
general government, while it allowed local independence 
the freest hand. 



438 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

The tenth and eleventh centuries were the age of ex- 
treme disintegration, when the local and the narrow pre- 
vailed universally. The papacy shared in the decline of 
all general power. Even the revival of the Roman Em- 
pire by the Saxon kings of Germany, which looks like a 
return to unity and to broader ideas, was the revival of 
a title and a theory, hardly of a reality. But the idea of 
the universal supremacy of the pope was already too 
thoroughly worked out to remain long in abeyance. The 
reform led by the monastery of Cluny revived the old 
theories with greater precision and a clearer consciousness. 
It created also Hildebrand, the practical statesman, who 
attempted to carry out the theories by raising the papacy 
above all states. Meanwhile the strength of the emperor 
had greatly increased under the Franconian family, and 
immediately the two great theoretical institutions which 
the medieval mind had constructed upon the Roman 
foundation came into conflict. It was a conflict between 
medieval ideas, fought with medieval weapons, and it 
ceased only when the medieval in every direction was be- 
beginning to give place to the modern. Its net result 
for the history of civilization was that it prevented the 
realization in facts of either theory — the world political 
empire or the world ecclesiastical empire. 

At the moment when this strife was at its height the 
turning-point of the middle ages was reached. Europe 
was roused from its lethargy by a high purpose, and 
stimulated in the crusades to an activity which never 
afterwards declined. Already here and there new influ- 
ences had begun to work, in commerce and in a desire 
for learning especially. Now all classes were stirred by 
the general enthusiasm. The new impulse received be- 
gan to show itself in every direction. The course of civ- 
ilization turned away from the dark ages towards modern 
times. 

Commerce was the first to feel the new forces, because 



SUMMARY 439 

the most directly touched by the crusades. Ships were 
multiplied; new articles of commerce brought into use; 
new routes opened; geographical knowledge increased; 
villages were transformed into cities; money came into 
more general use; wealth was accumulated, and with 
wealth power and influence in a new class, the Third 
Estate. In lands the most favored, serfdom disappeared, 
and the agricultural laborer shared to some extent in the 
general improvement. These results of increasing com- 
merce acted directly upon the political development of 
Europe. The commercial classes demanded security and 
order. They stood ready to aid the state in repressing 
feudal violence. They demanded a uniform law, which 
they found in the Justinian code, and by their use of it, 
and by their influence in the governments which were 
forming, they secured its prevalence over the native law, 
thus strongly reinforcing the tendency to centralization 
naturally involved in the fall of feudalism. Finally, the 
Third Estate made its way into the government, as a class 
beside the other classes, and obtained an influence upon 
public affairs in the Diets and Parliaments and Estates 
General of the thirteenth century — an influence which it 
never discovered how to use. 

Politically the nations appeared immediately upon the 
crusades. Germany and Italy were defrauded of the 
unity which their national life would have justified and 
broken into contending fractions by the visionary Roman 
Empire, which the Ottos had revived. In Spain the slow 
recovery of the peninsula from the Mohammedans made 
the united monarchy possible only at the end of the 
fifteenth century. But France and England reached con- 
trasting results of the greatest interest. In France the 
predominant fact at the outset was the feudal system. 
The construction of a political unity answering to a na- 
tional life was a process of breaking down feudal barriers 
and absorbing feudal principalities. In this process the 



440 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

only institution which represented a unity above the 
feudal divisions, the monarchy, naturally took the lead. 
Every element of power lost by feudalism was added to 
the king's authority. As soon as the geographical con- 
struction was fairly under way the institutional began. 
National administrative, legislative, and judicial systems 
were got into operation. A national taxation and a na- 
tional army were formed. As a result of the line of de- 
velopment which it had been obliged to follow, the French 
nation came into existence with a closely centralized 
political life, directed by an absolute king. In England 
the predominant fact at the beginning was the uncon- 
trolled power of the sovereign. The English barons were 
not feudal princes. They were so situated that they 
could not hope to become princes. In striving to increase 
their own power at the expense of the king they had 
recourse to the only things of which they could know any- 
thing — older institutions, which limited the king's action 
or offered protection against his anger. Their necessary 
alliance with the other classes in the nation gave still more 
of a popular character to the government and made it pos- 
sible for the lower house of Parliament to be formed upon 
a really representative principle and to obtain increasing 
power in public affairs. The political life of the English 
nation expressed itself in a limited monarchy, with defi- 
nitely formed institutions of public and private liberty. 
/ Politically modern history opens with the rise of conflict- 
ing interests between the newly formed states in attempts 
at expansion beyond their original boundaries — with the 
beginning of diplomacy and of international politics. 

Intellectually the mind of Europe was wakened to an 
intense desire for learning before it knew where to find 
the materials of knowledge. The result was the forma- 
tion of a great system of speculative learning, scholasti- 
cism, which seemed to its adherents so vitally important 
that it became a serious obstacle to the advance of real 



SUMMARY 441 

learning. With the fourteenth century the true way 
was found. Led perhaps by the reawakening of a gen- 
uine literary feeling, by an admiration for the writings 
of the ancients and a sense of the unity of the past with 
the present, the first humanists sought eagerly for all 
the remains of classical civilization. Greek, which the 
middle ages had never known, was recovered, as well 
as a better knowledge of Latin. The spirit of criticism 
was quickly awakened. True scientific work was begun. 
Careful editions of literary and historical works were 
prepared. A more accurate knowledge of the past was 
gained. Old beliefs were brought to the test of facts, 
and time-honored myths destroyed on all sides. The 
right of investigation and of individual judgment was 
established. In physical science Copernicus was pro- 
vided with the material and the method which led to the 
first great advance in the understanding of nature. The 
invention of printing popularized the new learning and 
gave it better weapons. The discovery of America, and 
all the work of the century together, broadened and lib- 
eralized men's minds, and opened a future full of prom- 
ise. With this the middle ages closed in the intellectual 
world and modern history began. 

In the ecclesiastical world less progress had been made 
by the beginning of the sixteenth century because the 
resisting power had been greater. The nations as they 
arose had successfully opposed the political interference 
of the papacy in their domestic affairs. England, France, 
and Germany in succession had proclaimed their inde- 
pendence. But the attempt, at the Council of Constance, 
to reconstruct the government of the church upon the 
model of the ideas and institutions which had grown up 
in the political progress of the thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries had failed completely. The same result had 
followed the several attempts to introduce religious or 
ecclesiastical reform, either local or general, which had 



442 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

been made before the beginning of the sixteenth century. 
At that date the modern spirit had, in the main, posses- 
sion of all the world except the ecclesiastical portion of it. 
But if the modern spirit had been kept under in these 
matters it had not been destroyed, and when it found its 
leader in Luther the suddenness of the revolution showed 
how thorough had been the preparation for it. The 
Reformation sought as its conscious object a return to a 
more primitive Christianity in practice and belief, but it 
accomplished more than this. It created a general at- 
mosphere of intellectual independence and freedom wher- 
ever it prevailed which, if not always perfectly realized, 
has been, nevertheless, one of the most essential condi- 
tions of modern progress. 

With the Reformation the history of the middle ages 
was closed for every department of civilization. This is 
the same as to say that for every department of civili- 
zation the work of waiting, of preparation, was now over, 
and that an age of more rapid progress, basing itself upon 
the results of the world's first age of similar progress, now 
succeeded an age of relatively slow advance. The age 
which lay between had had its necessary work to do. To 
the results of ancient civilization, it had added new ideas 
and institutions from other sources, and, even more im- 
portant, it had brought in a new race and trained it to 
understand and to build upon the best productions of the 
ancient world. The reason why the advance of the last 
four centuries has been so marvellous, comparatively 
speaking, is because the middle ages moulded into a perfect 
unity a living and organic world civilization, the best con- 
tributions of Greek and Roman, Christian and German. 

In sum total the beginning of the sixteenth century 
shows these advances to have been made over the begin- 
ning of the fifth. A new race was on the field as the crea- 
tive agent in history — the Teutonic— organized now in a 



SUMMARY 443 

number of independent nations, and not in one great 
empire, but forming an equally or even more close unity 
in civilization than the old empire, in which the work of 
each nation is immediately the common property of all. 
This unity was now so thoroughly established, so much a 
part of the world's daily habit of thought and action, that 
the idea of the Roman Empire, upon which it had been 
originally based, had entirely disappeared, and if any idea 
of the special source of this unity had taken its place, it 
was that of the Christian faith as its common character- 
istic and foundation — Christendom. The nations organ- 
ized within this unity were no longer city states, but in 
them all parts of the land were equally organic factors 
in the composition of the nation. Their governments 
presented, with local variations, two general types, one 
of which, at least, was a decided advance upon any of 
the ancient world. One was a closely centralized mon- 
archy, in which the functions of government, recovered 
from the smaller powers — the feudal lords — which had 
usurped them in a time of political confusion, were vested 
in an uncontrolled sovereign. The other was also in 
form a monarchy, but it was a monarchy which allowed 
full local self-government in the subdivisions of the state 
without loss of efficiency, that is, it was a strong national 
government, without close centralization. The functions 
of the general government, exercised at first by the king, 
were passing more and more under the control of the 
people by means of a series of institutional checks upon 
the royal power which were not known to the ancient 
world. This control was exercised by representatives of 
the people, under a representative system, real though 
incomplete, which with the limited monarchy was the 
most valuable contribution which this race had yet made 
to practical politics. The liberty of the individual was 
protected by institutions which were also new. In other 
words, this type of government was that of a free state 



444 MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 

well under way, its institutions of liberty already so defi- 
nitely shaped as to be capable of transmission through 
long ages, and of adaptation to other races and other en- 
vironments. 

In economic civilization, as compared with the fifth 
century the commerce of the sixteenth was no longer 
confined to the Mediterranean, but the whole world was 
open to it, and an age of great colonies was about to begin. 
The slavery of Europeans had disappeared from the Chris- 
tian states, and serfdom, which in the fifth century was 
just beginning to take the place of slavery, had also been 
left behind by a few of the more advanced nations. Labor 
had become more honorable than in ancient times. The 
class of free laborers had arisen, with but little influence 
as yet, but revealing clearly the possession of that power 
in its infancy, which they were to exercise in the future. 

Intellectually, the world had come into possession, at 
the beginning of the sixteenth century, of the printing- 
press and a greatly extended geographical knowledge. 
These in themselves constituted a revolution, but in 
hardly any other particular was there an advance over the 
fifth century, though the attitude of mind towards life 
and all intellectual problems was a great advance upon the 
medieval. The active mind of the middle ages had been 
employed in the construction of great philosophical and 
theological systems, valuable for their own purposes but 
adding little to real knowledge. The great effort of the 
last age, now just successful, had been to learn what the 
ancients had known, to regain a more just estimate of 
man and of his powers, to begin the formulation of the 
great problems demanding to be solved, and to restore 
more productive methods of scientific work. The first 
great discovery in the field of physical science was just 
on the eve of announcement. 

In art much which the fifth century possessed had 
been lost never to be recovered, but much also had been 



SUMMARY 445 

added to the world's store — the Divine Comedy and 
Chaucer, the cathedrals of Europe and the earlier works 
of Renaissance art. 

Religiously, the opening of the sixteenth century pre- 
sented, in external appearance at least, no advance upon 
the fifth. Those modifications of the primitive and spir- 
itual Christianity which had been introduced at the 
earlier date, because of the difficulty of holding true to 
the higher life in a* declining age, which had perhaps 
enabled the Christian organization to meet the perils of 
the age of conquest with greater safety, and to become a 
more effective teacher of barbarous races, through which, 
however, the gifted soul had always been able to see the 
light — these modifications or corruptions still remained 
as the popular Christianity, hardened into a vast, and in- 
deed splendid, system of ceremonies and doctrinal beliefs. 
In place of the formative constitution of the fifth cen- 
tury now appeared a most highly organized absolutism, a 
great ecclesiastical empire, with perfected machinery of 
government and a growing system of law. But if at the 
opening of the sixteenth century the church was still in 
appearance medieval, it was just on the verge of the revo- 
lution which was to make it more modern, and to mark 
the first long step in advance towards a truer understand- 
ing of Christianity. 

However long this catalogue may be of those things in 
which the first years of the sixteenth century surpassed 
those of the fifth, the great change was in the new race, 
the new spirit, which now entered into the possession of 
the results of the past. New impulses were felt by every 
man, and the promise of a wider future. New forces were 
opening the way in every direction. Humanity was en- 
tering upon another great era of the rapid conquest of 
nature and of truth. 



INDEX 



Abelard, 268. 

Adolf of Nassau, Emperor, 357. 

Agriculture, feudal organization of, 
192 ff. 

Alaric, 29; 68; 123 /. 

Albigenses, 268; 313; 407/. 

Alcuin, 160; 358. 

Alexander III, Pope, 248. 

Alexius Comnenus, 257 /. 

Alfred the Great, 182. 

Allodial land, 212 /. 

Ambrose of Milan, 116. 

America, discovery of, 284; 355; 379 ff. 

Andorra, Republic of, 286, note. 

Anglo-Saxon race, the institution-mak- 
ing power, 22; 37, note; 100, note 2; 
their laws, 33; 35; their invasion of 
England, 70 /.; elective monarchy, 
96 /.; their self-developing common 
law, 99 /.; their future political in- 
fluence, 101; 137; 192, note; German 
denial of indebtedness to, 101, note; 
and a world state, 188, note; and 
monasticism, 260, note; their law of 
treason, 348/. 

Arabs, the, their attack on Gaul, 139; 
148; 205; their conquests, 148; 255 ff.; 
Charlemagne, 154; their work for 
civilization, 255 ff.; 359. 

Arianism, 125; 140/.; 227. 

Aristotle, 359; 360, note ; 368; 377; 419; 
his Politics, 20. 

Army, standing, beginning of modern, 
3215329. 

Arnulf, King of Germany, 172 /. 

Ascetic motive, power in middle ages, 
259; 260 ff. 

Asceticism. See Monasticism. 

Assizes de Jerusalem, 217 /. 

Athaulf, King of the Visigoths, 68. 

Athenians, inferior to Romans in polit- 
ical skill, 28, note. 

Attila, 70; 72. 



Augustine, St., 36; 53, note; 56, note; 
his theology, 117; his philosophy of 
history, 118, note; his City oj God, 118, 
note; 224; his use of Greek, 358; in- 
fluence on Luther, 419. 

Avignon, the papacy at, 388 ff. 

"Babylonian captivity," the, 300. 

Bacon, Lord, on Scholasticism, 360, note. 

Bacon, Roger, 268; 361; 379 

Bailli, the, 315; 317; 324. 

Basel, Council of, 399 /. 

Beaumanoir, 218. 

Belisarius, 73. 

Benedict XIII, 396; 397. 

Benedict, St., the "rule" of, 132, note. , 

"Benefice," the, 196; 197, note; 206; * 
215. 

Bible, critical study of, 373, note; in 
the early reformation movements, 
411; influence of the Reformation on 
the study of, 431. See New Testa- 
ment. 

Blackstone's Commentaries, description 
of feudalism in, 215. 

Blanche of Castile, Queen of France, 
312. 

Boniface VIII, 324, note; 384 J".; 405. 

Boniface, St., 148/.; 228. 

"Boss," the American party, in Italian 
cities, 353 /. and note. 

Bourgeoisie, villes de, 288; 200. 

Bourges, Synod of, 400. 

Bouvines, battle of, 311. 

Britain, abandoned by the Romans, 70; 
occupied by the Saxons, 70 /. 

Bruges, in medieval commerce, 280. 

Brunner, H., on the circuit justices of 
England, 159, note 2; on the feudal 
system, 202, note; 203, note; 205, note. 

Burgundians, the, 67; 68; 139; 141. 

Byzantine civilization, influence of, on 
the West, 86, note. 



447 



448 



INDEX 



Canon law, influence of Roman law 
upon, 36. 

Capetian dynasty, beginning of, 178 jf.; 
advantage over Carolingians, 210; 
efforts of, to form modern France, 
306 jf.; 310; complete France geo- 
graphically, 330. 

Carolingian family, the, its rise, 145 
jf.; decline of, 167/.; 171; end of, in 
Germany, 173; in France, 178; Ca- 
petian advantage over, 210. 

Celestin V, 384. 

Celibacy of the clergy, the, 239. 

Cellini, 379. 

Champagne, Count of, complex feudal 
territories of, 218/. 

Charlemagne, 151 jf.; 436; his states- 
manship, 152; conquests, 153; in- 
stitutional creations, 156 jf.; legisla- 
tion, 159/.; schools, 160/.; 358; be- 
comes Emperor of Rome, 104; 161/.; 
results of his reign, 163 J".; fall of his 
empire, 167 /.; causes of its fall, 168 
jf.; his influence on feudalism, 207; 
his relation to the church, 229 /. 

Charles the Fat, 167; 179. 

Charles IV, Emperor, 351. 

Charles V, Emperor, 415. 

Charles V, France, 327/. 

Charles VI, France, 328. 

Charles VII, France, 328/. 

Charles VIII, France, 330. 

Charles Martel, 147 jf.; 205; 206. 

Chartres, the school of, 359. 

Cherokee, progress of, compared with 
that of the Franks, 9, note 1. 

Chivalry, origin of, 271; influence of, 
272 /./ ethics of, 272 /. 

Christianity, spread of, aided by the 
Roman unity, 31; influence of, on 
Roman law, 32; hinderances to spread 
of, 40 jf.; aids to spread of, 42 jf.; 
attitude of Roman government to- 
ward, 45 jf.; attitude of, toward the 
state, 47, note; 60; contributions of, 
to civilization, 50 jf.; and church 
government, 50; 108 Jf.; and theology, 
50; 109; religious contributions, 51 
jf.; ethical contributions, 54 jf.; in- 
fluence of, on relation of individual 
to the state, 60; on idea of equality, 
60; on abolition of slavery, 61, note; 
on advancement of woman, 61, note; 
on separation of church and state, 61 



/.; introduced new energy, 63; in the 
Renaissance age, 374; 377 /. 

Church, the, influence of Roman law 
upon, 36; Christianity and, 50; 109; 
separation of state and, 62; influ- 
ence on the Germans, 104; forma- 
tion of Roman Catholic, in jf.; aids 
in formation of the modern nations, 
174; 181 /.; attempts to reconstruct 
the constitution of, 401 /.; condition 
of, at beginning of sixteenth century, 
406 ff. 

Cities, free, rise of, in Italy, 247 /.; 
295 /•/ their struggle with the em- 
perors, 247 Jf.; 295 /.; rise of, after 
the crusades, 285 /.; influence of 
Roman institutions on, 285, note; 
aided by feudal forms, 286; in France, 
286 Jf.; in Germany, 296 /.; the city 
leagues, 297. 

Civilization, medieval, general char- 
acter of, 6 jf.; 433; reasons for de- 
cline of, 10 /.; why slow advance in, 
12 /.; lines of development after the 
crusades, 273; summary of, 433 jf.; 
advances in, 442 jf. 

Civilization, modern, sources of, 15 Jf.; 
contributions to, by Greece, 16 jf.; 
by Rome, 20 jf.; by Christianity, 
50 jf.; by the Germans, 88 jf.; why 
comparatively productive, 442. 

Claudius, the Emperor, on Roman 
political policy, 27/. 

Clement V, 388. 

Clericis laicos, the bull, 385; 386, note; 
387. 

Clovis, 29; 137 if- 

Cluny, reform movement of, 239 Jf. 

Colet, John, 371 /.; 376. 

Coloni, the, 66. See Serfdom. 

Columbus, 290; 379 jf.; a product of the 
Renaissance, 380/. 

Comitatus, the, 101 /.; 202 /. 1 

"Commendation," the practice of, J 
198/. 

Commerce, effect of the crusades upon, 
268 /.; 277; 438 /.; influence of, in 
later middle ages, 275; decline of 
Roman, 275; in early middle ages, 
276; the regions and articles of me- 
dieval, 277 Jf.; influence of Turks 
upon, 278; 283; character of later 
medieval, 283; influence on rise of 
cities, 285; on feudalism, 291 jf.; on 



INDEX 



449 



rise of national governments, 292 ff.; 
on the rise of national law, 293 ff.; on 
the Third Estate, 299 ff. 

Commons, the, formation of, in En- 
gland, 300; the House of, composi- 
tion of, 343; growth of the power of, 
339; 344 f. 

Commune, the, 286 Jf. 

Constance, Council of, 397 ff.; 399; 410. 

Constance, treaty of, 249. 

Constantine, 8; his adoption of Chris- 
tianity, 48 /.; and constitutional 
changes of Diocletian, 49; effect, of 
his adoption of Christianity, 112. 

"Constantine, Donation of," 230 /.; 
242; 369. 

Constantinople, 5; 67; 369. 

Copernicus, 376; 380. 

Corpus juris civilis, 33 /. See Roman 
Law. 

Councils, church, beginning of, 116; re- 
lation of, to the papacy, 387 ff.; 396 
ff.; attempt to reconstruct the con- 
stitution by means of, 401; failure of 
the attempt, 402. 

Courts, formation of national in France, 
316 ff.; in England, 320, note. See 
Jurisdiction, "Justice." 

Crusades, the, 254 ff.; the first, 257 ff.; 
263; causes of, 258 ff.; a common 
European movement, 265; results of, 
266 jf.; 277; the end of, 261; 264; 381. 

Curia regis, the, 316/.; 322; 323/. 

Dahn, Felix, 9, note; 202, note. 

Dante, on the origin of the Capetians, 
178, note; his relation to the Renais- 
sance, 365 /. 

Declaration of Independence, the Amer- 
ican, 35, note 2; 97, note. 

"Decretals, the false," 231 /. 

"Digest," the, of Justinian, 33; on the 
Precarium, 197, note. 

Diocletian, persecution of Christianity 
by, 47; 49; changes in Roman consti- 
tution by, their importance, 49. 

Diplomacy, the beginnings of, 355. 

Dominicans, the, 408. 

Economic forces, in origin of feudalism, 

192; relation to general progress, 274. 

Edward I, England, 324, note; 341; 384 

/.; 387. 

Edward II, England, 97; 341; 345. 



Edward III, England, 342; 344; 348; 
39o; 39i- 

Eleanor of Aquitaine, 309. 

Emancipation of serfs, 302 ff. 

England, origin of representative sys- 
tem in, 94; elective monarchy in, 96 
/.; the common law of, 98 ff.; be- 
ginning of modern, 182 ff.; feudal- 
ism in, 183; 334 ff.; character of po- 
litical progress in, 186/.; the city in, 
298 /.; serfdom in, 303 ; formation of 
modern, 332 ff.; 440; effect of Nor- 
man conquest on, 332 ff.; institu- 
tional development of, 335 ff.; con- 
stitution of, at the end of the middle 
ages, 338 /.; effect of French pos- 
sessions on, 342, note; civil liberty 
in, in 1485, 346; conflict with the 
papacy, 384; 387; 3go; medieval 
heresies in, 409, note 2. 

Enqueteur, the, 316. 

Episcopate, origin of, in the church, 107. 

Erasmus, early life, 371; in England, 
371; influence of Colet on, 371 and 
note; his purposes, 372 /.; his New 
Testament, 373 /.; his answer to 
objections, 373, note; his relation to 
the Reformation, 374 /.; leads the 
attack on the old system, 377; his 
service to civilization, 414. 

Estates General, the, rise of, 319; 322 
ff-', 386 /.; attempt of, to form a con- 
stitution, 326 /.; set aside by the 
king, 328. 

Ethics, religion and, 52 /.; contribu- 
tions of Christianity to, 54 ff.; of 
chivalry, 272 /.; of the Renaissance 
age, 378. 

Eugenius IV, 400. 

Explorations, the age or, as resulting 
from the crusades, 269; in the fif- 
teenth century, 283; 379/. 

Federal government, origin of, 20, note; 
possibility of, in the constitution of 
the church, 403. 

Ferdinand, Spain, 354 /.; 415. 

Feudal system, the, Fustel de Cou- 
Ianges on, 136, note; conditions which 
gave rise to, 170/.; in Germany, 173; 
223, note; in England, 183 /.; 334 
ff.; formation of, 189 ff.; extra-Eu- 
ropean, 191; two distinct sides to, 
191 /.; its influence on civilization, 



45o 



INDEX 



220 jf.; 448; effect of the crusades 
upon, 269; effect of commerce upon, 
27s; 291 $.; economic foundation of, 
291; in France, 306; fall of, 330. 

Fief, the, 196; 218/. See Benefice. 

Florence, government of, 296; 353 /. 

France, beginning of modern, 173 jf.; 
439/-/ character of political progress 
in, 186; free cities in, 286 jf.; forma- 
tion of modern, 305 jf.; institutional 
development of, 315 jf.; conflict with 
the papacy, 323; 384/.; not wholly- 
united, 330, note; national church 
of, 400/. 

Franciscans, the, 408. 

Franciscans, the "spiritual," 392. 

Frankfort, the declaration of, 390 /. 

Franks, the, 85; their alliance with the 
papacy, 126; 141; 150; 227 /./impor- 
tance of their history, 135; begin- 
ning of their conquests, 137; retain 
German elements, 139; unite Roman 
and German, 139; and early feudal- 
ism, 200 /.; their relation to the 
growth of the feudal system, 203 /.; 
their institutions in England, 332. 

Fredegonda, Queen, 144, note. 

Frederick I, Barbarossa, Emperor, 244 
$.; 264. 

Frederick I, Brandenburg, 352. 

Frederick II, Emperor, 251 /.; 264; 383. 

Free thought, the Reformation and, 420 
and note; 429 and note; 431. 

Freeman, E. A., on the rapid spread of 
Christianity, 41. 

Fustel de Coulanges, his historical work, 
136, note; 371, note. 

Gallican church, liberties of the, 401, 
note. 

Gaul, successive changes in different 
ages, 10, note; Romanization of, 24; 
occupied by the Germans, 67 /. 

Gerbert of Rheims, 233 /.; 268; 359. 

Germans, early, compared with North 
American Indians, 9; their Romaniza- 
tion, 13; 28. 

Germans, in Roman Empire before the 
invasion, 25; 67; their conquest of 
Rome held back, 29; their contribu- 
tions to civilization, 89 Jf.; indebted- 
ness of modern, to Anglo-Saxon in- 
stitutions, 101 and note. See Teutonic 
race. 



Germany, formation of modern, 172 
jf.; character of political progress in, 
185/.; later feudal history of, 224 Jf.; 
235; 249 /.; later medieval histoiy, 
349 S-; coruIict~witrr''the~ _ papacy f 
390 /.; national church of, 400 /. 

Gerson, John, and the councils, 395; 
and Luther, 418 

Gnosticism, in. 

Goths. See Ostrogoths, Visigoths. 

Graf, the, 156/. 

Greece, contributions of, to civilization, 
16 J - .; not political, 19/. 

Greek language, knowledge of, in mid- 
dle ages, 10; 358; a universal lan- 
guage in the East, 26, note 1; revived 
study of, 369. 

Greek philosophy, a permanent ele- 
ment of civilization, 17; adopted by 
the Romans, 21; influence on Roman 
law, 32; aid to spread of Christian- 
ity, 44; influence on Christian the- 
ology, 112; in scholasticism, 360/. 

Greeks, not a political race, 19; 20, note 
2; contrast with Romans, in power of 
assimilation, 27 f.; their influence on 
the Arabs, 256. 

Gregory I, the Great, 116; 122; 123; 
226/.; 227. 

Gregory VII, 238 J*.; 242; 263; 383; 405. 

Gregory XI, 393. 

Gregory XII, 396; 397; 404. 

Gregory of Tours, citation from his 
History oj the Franks, 144, note. 

Guelfs, the, 246; 248; 250. 

Habeas Corpus, 339. 

Hadrianople, battle of, 65 /. 

Hallam, Henry, citation from, on civil 

rights, 348. 
Hanseatic League, the, 280; 297 /. 
Hapsburg family, the, 350 /.; 415. 
Henry I, England, 308. 
Henry II, England, 309; 310; 346. 
Henry III, England, 312; 340/. 
Henry IV, England, 342. 
Henry VIII, England, 345. 
Henry I, King of Germany, 175 /. 
Henry HI, Emperor, 235 /.; 237; 238; 

245- 
Henry IV, Emperor, 237 f.; 263. 
Henry VI, Emperor, 237; 250/. 
Henry VII, Emperor, 350; 331 /. 
Henry the Lion, 246; 248; 250. 



INDEX 



451 



Henry, Prince, of Portugal, 283. 
Hildebrand. See Gregory VII. 
Hohenzollern, House of, 352. 
Hugh Capet, King of France, 179 /.; 

307. 
Humanism. See Renaissance. 
Hundred Years' War, the, 326; 328; 

342; 300. 
Hungarians, invasions of the, 155; 169; 

173; 176. 
Huns, the, attack the Gothic kingdom, 

65; invade Gaul and Italy, 70. 
Huss, John, 410; 413; 426. 
Hutten, Ulrich von, 377. 

"Immunity," the, 208/. 

Impeachment, beginning of the practice 
of, 344 /• 

India, medieval commerce with, 278/.; 
283/. 

Indians of North America, early Ger- 
mans compared with, 9 and note 1. 

Infallibility, papal, 404; 423; 426. 

Innocent I, 116. 

Innocent in, 242; 251 /.; 264; 383; 405. 

Innocent IV, 252. 

"Institutes," the, of Justinian, 33/. 

International politics, rise of, 355; 405. 

Investiture strife, 239 jf. 

Isabella of Spain, 354. 

"Isi dorian Decretals, pseudo," 231/. 

Italy, condition in tenth century, 177; 
in eleventh, 239 /.; in twelfth, 247; 
free cities in, 295 /.; serfdom in, 303; 
in the later middle ages, 353 /.; con- 
ditions which favored the Renais- 
sance, 364 /. 

Jerusalem, Kingdom of, 263; 264. 

Joan of Arc, 328. 

John VHI, 232. 

John XXIII, 396; 397- 

John, England, 310/.; 336; 390. 

Judge, independence of, 347 /. 

Judicial system, early German, 94 /.; 
Carolingian, 156 $.; formation of, in 
France, 316 Jf.; in England, 320, note. 

Julius I, 116. 

Julius II, 353- 

Julius Caesar, 8; 29; 64; 367. 

Jurisdictio, 208. 

Jurisdiction, private feudal, 193/.; pub- 
lic in private hands, 194 /.; 208 /. 



Jury, the, not in Magna Carta, 337; 

except in its primitive form, 346; 

origin of, 346 /.; its importance for 

liberty, 347; general verdicts by, 347, 

note 1. 
"Justice," in feudal law, 208; 212; 

213. 
Justinian, his code in the East, 26; 

his codification of Roman law, 33; 

his conquests, 73; 276; his code in 

Italy, 73 /. See Roman Law. 

Kiersy, capitulary of, 170, note. 
Konrad I, King of Germany, 175. 
Konrad II, Emperor, 235. 
Konrad III, Emperor, 264, 

Langton, Stephen, 327. 

Language, universal, in ancient world, 
24; 25/. 

Latin language, knowledge of, in mid- 
dle ages, 10; 358 /.; in the Roman 
provinces, 24; 25 /.; a universal lan- 
guage, 25 /. 

Latin literature, compared with Greek, 
21. 

Law, a national system of, demand of 
commerce and the cities for, 293 $.; 
in France, 319 /.; 330, note; in En- 
gland, 320, note. 

Law, English common, 99; 100, note 1; 
320, note 1. 

Law, Roman. See Roman Law. 

Learning, revival of. See Renaissance. 

Lefevre, reformer, 415. 

Legnano, battle of, 248. 

Leo I, 70; 116; 124. 

Leo III, 161. 

Leo IX, 237. 

Lewis TV, Emperor, 350; 351; 392. 

Liberia, Republic of, 30, note. 

Libri Fundorum, the, 217; 218 and note. 

Literature, medieval, 133; 215; 358/. 

Lombard League, the, 248; 297. 

Lombards, their conquest of Italy, 74; 
their kingdom, 149; danger to the 
papacy from, 150 /.; 353; Pippin at- 
tacks them, 150 /.; incorporated in 
Charlemagne's empire, 155. 

Louis VI, France, 307 /.; 323. 

Louis VII, France, 264; 309. 

Louis VIII, France, 312; 313. 

Louis IX, France, 264; 312; 318; 323. 



452 



INDEX 



Louis XI, France, 314; 320/. 

Louis the Pious, Emperor, 166. 

Luther, independent of earlier move- 
ments, 384 /.; 410; his relation to 
the Reformation movement, 416 /.; 
his personal characteristics, 417 f.; 
growth of his opinions, 418 jf.; his 
humanistic spirit, 410 /.; but still 
medieval, 421; his relation to the 
right of free thought, 422 /./ first 
public act of, in the Reformation, 424; 
is brought into opposition to the 
church, 425 /.; his position logically 
complete in the Leipsic debate, 426. 
See Protestantism, Reformation. 

Luxemburg, House of, 351 /. 

Machiavelli, 354; 379. 

Magna Carta, 325, note; 336 jf.; 341; 
the jury in, 337; 346. 

Mainz, Diet at, adopts provisions of 
church reform, 400. 

Manorial system, the, 193 jf.; the court 
of, 194; effect of increased circula- 
tion of money upon, 291 j". 

Marcel, Etienne, 327. 

Marco Polo, 269. 

Marcus Aurelius, 29; 75. 

Marsiglio of Padua, 392. 

Martin V, 398 /. 

Medici family, the, 296; 353 /. 

Mercantile system, the, rise of, 281, 
note. 

Merovingian family, character of, 144 /. 

Middle ages, the, boundary dates of, 
4 /.; general character of, 6; 363 /.; 
reasons for decline of civilization in, 
11; why progress slow during, 12 /.; 
lines of progress in latter half of, 274 
/.; summary of, 433 jf.; advances in 
civilization during, 433 jf. 

Milan, government of, 296; 354. 

Missi dominici, the, 157 jf.; 166; 316. 

Mithraism, 42. 

Mohammedanism, 51; 255 jf. 

Mohammedans, influence on civiliza- 
tion through the crusades, 267. Euro- 
pean commerce with, 278 /. 

Monarchy, development of constitu- 
tional, 97; effect of crusades on rise 
of modern, 270; of commerce, 292 
jf.; of Roman law, 319 /.; develop- 
ment of French absolute, 319 /.; 321 
/.; 329; Norman in England, 333; de- 



velopment of English constitutional, 
335 J 340- 

Monasticism, origin of, 129; sources of 
its influence, 131; its work for civili- 
zation, 132 jf.; prevalence of ascetic 
feeling, 260 /.; a spiritual refuge for 
some, 417. 

Money, increased circulation of, 291 /.; 
effect of, 291 /. 

Monod, G., did not follow Fustel de 
Coulanges, 136, note; quotation from, 
222, note. 

Montfort, Simon de, 327; 341. 

More, Sir Thomas, 371; 374; 428. 

Nations, beginning of modern, 171 jf.; 
436 /.; formation of the modern idea 
of, 187; influence of commerce on 
the formation of, 292 jf.; final rise of 
modern, 305 jf. See State. 

New Testament, critical study of, 369; 
372; 373, note; 377. 

Nicholas I, 232. 

Nicholas II, 239; 241. 

Normans, the, their conquest of En- 
gland, 183; 259; 332 /.; in southern 
Italy, 241; 259; attacks of, on the 
Eastern Empire, 257; in the first 
crusade, 263; 265. 

Northmen, the, 155; their attacks on 
Gaul, 169; 183; on England, 182/. 

Nuremberg, peace of, 415. 

Ockham, William of, 392. 

Odovaker, 5; 71 /. 

Ostrogoths, submit to Huns, 65; their 

kingdom in Italy, 72 /.; its fall, 73. 
Otto I, Emperor, 165; 176 jf.; 233. 
Otto II, Emperor, 233. 
Otto III, Emperor, 233 /. 
Otto IV, Emperor, 250; 311. 
Ottokar II, Bohemia, 351. 
Oxford, provisions of, 340 /. 
Oxford reformers, the, 371 jf..; 374, note. 

Papacy, the, its formation, 106 jf.; 
growth of the territory subject to it, 
74; 123; 151; its alliance with the 
Franks, 126; 141; 150; 227 /.; its 
conflict with the empire, 224 jF.; 438; 
its relation to Italian independence, 
295; 3535 with the new nations, 
323 $■'> 383 /.; at Avignon, 388 
jf.; loss of its international position, 



INDEX 



453 



389; 407; the Great Schism, 394; 
growth of revolutionary ideas con- 
cerning, 394; attempt to transform, 
into a limited monarchy, 401; result, 
403 /.; political position of, at end of 
middle ages, 404 /. 

Parlement, the French, 317; 319; 329. 

Parliament, the English, beginning of, 
323; 324, note; 341; development of 
its power, 341 f.; the model parlia- 
ment, 343. 

Patrocinium, the, 197; 203. 

Pavia, Council of, 399. 

Peasant class, the, in the age of the 
crusades, 270; aided by the increased 
use of money, 292; in the later mid- 
dle ages, 300 jf.; Wat Tyler's insur- 
rection, 408. 

People, the, not the same as the Third 
Estate, 300. 

Peter d'Ailly, 379. 

Peter the Hermit, 257. 

Peter, St., the apostle, 119; 120. 

Petrarch, his relation to the Renais- 
sance, 366 Jf. 

Philip I, France, 307. 

Philip II, Augustus, of France, 264; 
310/.; 315; 323. 

Philip III, France, 313. 

Philip IV, the Fair, France, 314; 323 
/./384#. 

Philip VI, France, 325. 

Philosophy, among the Greeks, 17 /.; 
Roman, 21. See Greek Philosophy, 
Scholasticism, Stoicism. 

Pico della Mirandola, 372. 

Pippin the Short, 148; 150/. 

Pisa, Council of, 396. 

Plato, 44; 368; 372. 

Portuguese, explorations of, 283 /.; 381. 

Precarium, the, 197 and note; 200; 204; 
206. 

Prtodt, the, 315; 317. 

Printing, invention of, 369/.; 381. 

Protective system, the rise of the, 281 /. 

Protestantism, and free thought, 420 
and note; 429 and note; 431; how dif- 
fers from Roman Catholicism, 427 /.; 
430; prevailingly theological, 428; em- 
phasized the sermon, 430. See Luther, 
Reformation. 

Prussia, the rise of, 352. 

Quadrivium, the, 358. 



Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse, 313. 

Reformation, the, early attempts at, 
407 $.; their characteristics, 411; why 
it was revolutionary, 412 /.; condi- 
tions which favored, 413 /.; it was 
inevitable, 415 /.; first step in, 424; 
effect of this, 425 /.; meaning and 
results of, 426 $.; 432. See Luther, 
Protestantism. 

Religion, Christian vs. Pagan, 40 /.; 
contribution of Christianity to, 51 Jf. 

Renaissance, the, relation to the mid- 
dle ages as a whole, 12; its spirit in 
time of Charlemagne, 161 and note; 
characteristics of, 356 /.; 363 /.; 
scholasticism and, 360; 362; 367 /.; 
conditions which favored, 363 £.; 
characteristics among the northern 
nations, 370 /.; relation of, to the 
Reformation, 374 /.; attitude of the 
universities toward, 376 /.; sceptical 
tendency in, 377 /.; the fine arts in, 
378 /.; its morals, 378 /.; results pro- 
duced by, 381 /.; its spirit in Luther, 
4*9 if- 

Renan, on spread of Christianity, 31. 

Representative system, the, 20; origin 
of, 94 jf.; first use of, in modern 
states, 323; in England, 342 /.; in the 
church, 401 /. 

Rheims, the school of, 359. 

Rhine Cities, League of the, 298. 

Richard I, England, 264; 310. 

Richard II, England, 97; 342; 345; 
410. 

Rienzo, 393. 

Roman Catholic Church, formation of, 
107 /.; a reformed church, 427; how 
differs from Protestantism, 427 /.; 
430; emphasizes the idea of worship, 
430; its relation to free thought, 430, 
note. See Papacy. 

Roman Empire, Eastern, sj 71; 86, 
note; 162. 

Roman Empire, the Holy, 104; 164 /.; 
224/.; 253; 295; 353; 438; in the later 
middle ages, 349 Jf. 

Roman law, 32 Jf.; amelioration of, 3.1; 
codification of, 33; influence of, 34 
Jf-/ 74; 303. note; 319 /.; in modern 
states, 99; in the German kingdoms, 
143; studied in Italy, 248; revived 
study of, 294 /.; in France, 318 jf.; 
in England, 319; 335. 



454 



INDEX 



Romanization of the Germans, 13; 29; 
of the ancient world, 23 J".; the East 
no real exception, 26; results of, 29/. 

Rome, decline of her assimilating power, 
13; contributions of, to civilization, 
20 jf.; 433 /./ political, 22 jf.; legal, 
31 ff.; causes of fall of, 77 jf.; influ- 
ence of, in formation of the papacy, 
115/.; on the free cities, 285, note. 

Rudolf of Hapsburg, 350. 

Sardica, Council of, 124. 

Savonarola, 372. 

Saxons, the, invasion of England by, 
70/.; their conquest by Charlemagne, 
154 /.; their Christianization, 155; 
rise of the dukes of, 174. 

Schism, the Great, 394 f. 

Scholasticism, 268; 360 Jf.; 367 /.; 376 
/•>• 420 /. 

Schools, Charlemagne's revival of, 160 
/•/ 358 /.; decline of Roman, 358; 
medieval, 358 /.; some become uni- 
versities, 361; influence of the Ref- 
ormation on, 431. 

Science, natural and physical, work of 
the Greeks for, 17 $.; of the Arabs, 
256 /.; beginning of correct methods 
in, 361; 367; 375; the first advance of 
modern, 375/.; 380. 

Seebohm, on the Oxford reformers, 371, 
note; 373, note. 

Senichal, the, 315. 

Serfdom, rise of, 82 ; 301 /.; in the mid- 
dle ages, 302 /.; disappearance of, 303 
/. See Coloni. 

Sforza, family, the, 296. 

Sicily, Kingdom of, 241; 250/. 

Sickingen, Franz von, 352, note. 

Sigismund, Emperor, 352; 397. 

"Simony," purchase of ecclesiastical 
office, 239/. 

Slavery, Christianity and the abolition 
of, 61, note; Roman, 81 /.; in medi- 
eval commerce, 279; transformation 
into serfdom, 301 /.; still exists at 
end of middle ages, 302. 

Socrates, 53, note. 

Spain, abandoned by the Romans and 
entered by German tribes, 67 /.; oc- 
cupied by the Visigoths, 68 /.; con- 
quered by the Arabs, 148; condition 
of, in tenth century, 184 /.; rise of, 
at end of middle ages, 354 /. 



State, the, Christianity and, 46 /.; sep- 
aration of church and, 62; ancient 
and modern idea of, 61; 90; 187 /. 
See Nation. 

States General, the. See Estates General. 

Stephen, England, 334. 

Stilicho, 68. 

Stoicism, 55; 61; cultivated by the 
Romans, 21; influence of, on Roman 
law, 32; 35, note; a missionary philos- 
ophy, 58. 

Swabian League, 298. 

Sylvester II. See Gerbert of Rheims. 



Taxation, Roman, 27; 83 jf.; 199; be- 
ginning of modern, 292 /.; 324; 339/-/ 
385 J"-/ of the clergy, 323 /.; 384 jf.; 
in France, 328 /.; reference to, in 
Magna Carta, 336 /.; history of, in 
England, 335; 339/. 

Testry, battle of, 146. 

Tetzel, preacher of indulgences, 424; 
428. 

Teutonic race, adaptation to environ- 
ment, 13, note. See Germans. 

Theodoric, the Ostrogoth, 72 /.; 138; 
274; 276. 

Theodosian code, the, 33; 74. 

Theodosius the Great, Emperor, 8; 66 
/.; 71; 121, note. 

Theology, influence of Roman law upon, 
36; not Christianity, 50; xogf.; Greek 
philosophy and, 17; 112; tendency of 
Luther toward, 417 /./ 421; of Prot- 
estantism, 428 /. 

"Third degree, the police," 347, note. 

Third Estate, rise of, 269; 299 jf.; 439; 
in Estates General, 324; 326; in En- 
gland, 343 /. 

Thirteenth century, a great intellectual 
age, 268; 361 /.; outcome of, 362 /. 
See Scholasticism, Universities. 

Toscannelli, 379/. 

Toulouse, county of, added to France, 
313. 

Tours, battle of, 148. 

Treason, Anglo-Saxon laws of, 339; 
348/. 

Trent, Council of, 403 /. 

Trivium, the, 358. 

Truce of God, the, 316. 

Tudors, age of the, in English constitu- 
tional history, 329; 345 /. 



INDEX 



455 



Turks, the, Seljuk, 257; the relation 
of their conquests to commerce, 278; 
283; 284. 

Unam sanctam, the bull, 385 /. 

United States, the, 13, note; 20, note; 
24; 30, note; 35 and note 2; 51; 62; 84, 
note 1; 96 and note; 97, note; 159, 
note 2; 347, note; 354 and note. 

Universities, the founding of, 268; 
361 /.; attitude of, toward the re- 
vival of learning, 376 /. 

Urban VI, 394. 

Valentinian III, Emperor, 71; 125. 

Valla, Laurentius, 268; 369; 371; 373. 

Vandals, the, 67; 69; 73. 

Vasco da Gama, 283. 

Vassalage, beginning of, 198 /.; 202 /.; 

union with the benefice, 206. 
Vatican, Council of, 404. 
Vaudois, the. See Waldenses. 
Venice, beginning of, 74; in the fourth 

crusade, 264; early commerce of, 276; 

279; effect of Portuguese discoveries 



upon, 283 /.; rivalries with other cit- 
ies, 296; government of, 354. 

Verdun, treaty of, 166. 

Villa, the Roman, 193. 

Visigoths, enter the Roman Empire, 
65/.; their invasion of Greece, 67; of 
Italy, 67 $.; their settlement in Gaul 
and Spain, 68 /.; driven from Gaul, 
137. 

Waitz, Georg, 136, note; 151, note 2; 
202, note. 

Waldenses, the, 268; 407 /. 

Wat Tyler's insurrection, 408. 

William I, the Conqueror, England, 
183 /.; 308. 

Woman, position of, influence of Chris- 
tianity on, 61, note. 

Worms, the concordat of, 246 /. 

Wycliffe, 394; 408 /.; 414. 

Yvetot, Kingdom of, 213. 
Zwingli, Swiss reformer, 415. 






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